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REVELATION 

in ths 

. WjOUNYAE'T 



GERTRUDE 
MAJOR 












Gass Z >X W £_ 
Book .H3-f 





GERTRUDE MAJOR. 



The Revelation in the 
Mountain 



GERTRUDE KEENE MAJOR 



With an introduction by 

JUDGE C. C. GOODWIN 




COCHRANE PUBLISHING CO. 

NEW YORK 
1909 



^JSf 



These stories are reprinted by the courtesy of the "Salt Lake Tribune' 
and "The Pacific Monthly Magazine." 



CONTENTS. 

I — The Revelation in the Mountain y 

II — The Day of His Judgment 17 

77/ — The Thread of Scarlet 28 

IV — The Garment of Salvation 38 

V—The Isles That Wait 48 

VI— A First Wife 57 

VII — The House of Bondage 72 

VIII— When Celia Rang the Bell 81 

IX — The Sins of the Father 89 

X — The Hornet's Nest 97 

XI — What Christ Would Find 104 

XII — Rise of the Mormons 115 

XIII — The Oath of Vengeance 120 



TO THE AMERICAN PARTY, 

which is striving to bring the majesty of the Country's law to 
despotic Utah, this volume is respectfully dedicated by 

THE AUTHOR. 



FOREWORD BY JUDGE GOODWIN. 

When the Mormons first came to Utah they were 
embittered against the government of the United 
States, and it seemed to be the purpose of the few men 
who controlled the organization to keep alive and in- 
tensify that bitterness. Then polygamy, which had 
been long practised in Nauvoo, was openly promulgated 
by Brigham Young as a divine ordinance — the only rite 
which secured perfect exaltation to the spirits of mor- 
tals, after the death of the body here. To carry this 
out cruelties unspeakable were perpetrated. Then, too, 
all who did not indorse the system were held as ene- 
mies, and the rank and file were taught that such peo- 
ple were enemies of their church and were seeking to 
oppress the elect because of their religious beliefs. 
Under such a leader as Brigham Young, in the deso- 
lation of this then wilderness, atrocities unspeakable 
were committed. Moreover, Brigham Young kept a 
band of blood-atoners always in call and enemies were 
put out of the way. There is enough in the sermons 
preached in those days, in the acts performed, which 
are still in the memories of old residents, and in the 
skeletons found in excavating cellars in Salt Lake City 
to corroborate all that is said here and to show that 
the contents of this book make clear the spirit which 
ruled Utah for thirty years after 1847. 

The justification for publishing it now is that when 
the barbarism which ruled here was sufficiently beaten 
back to make it clear that the chiefs of this people saw 
disfranchisement immediately before them, they 
pledged the government and the Gentiles of Utah that 



henceforth the political rule which they had always 
held over their people should cease, and that polygamy 
should be abolished. Upon that they obtained state- 
hood. 

That brought peace and such contentment and hap- 
piness as had never been known here before. But it 
lasted only for a brief season. All the old wrongs 
were resumed within two years. Many of the highest 
officers of the church took new polygamous wives and 
the rule over the political beliefs of the Mormon peo- 
ple was reestablished in all its old tyranny. Never was 
this more fully exemplified than in the election here in 
the present month. Through that rule the senators 
who represent Utah in Washington were elected, 
through that rule the senior senator, an apostle in the 
dominant church, names every state officer in Utah. 

That the President of the United States looks on this 
with approval and uses the influence of his great office 
to continue the tyranny and the shame, does not matter. 
He cannot create a code which will justify turning back 
civilization for a thousand years, and establishing in 
this land a despotism Asiatic in all its attributes. An 
apostle of the church stated in a recent conference, 
where were gathered thousands of trusting Mormons, 
that not one principle, not one tenet of the original faith 
had ever been relinquished. That the men and women 
of the United States may realize what the system nat- 
urally leads to when unrestrained, the publication of 
this book is justified. 

C. C. Goodwin. 

November 17, 1908. 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

The Gentile lady sat on the Mormon lady's cool, 
vine-screened porch, and rocked gently back and forth 
over the creaking, warped old floor. She was embroid- 
ering a centerpiece in a lily-of-the-valley design, and 
listening, interestedly, to the gentle talk of her hostess. 

Their friendship had been formed shortly after the 
Gentile had moved to Salt Lake City, in the "breaking 
up" of the spring. She had been taken very ill, and 
her doctor had recommended Anne Smedgely as a 
master hand at nursing. 

A master hand she had proved to be, who devoted 
all her time and energies to her patient as long as she 
had need of her services, and had then gone quietly 
back to her little adobe house, with its three drab- 
colored front doors opening from its three drab-colored 
front rooms on to the long, sagging front porch, with 
its redeeming drapery of green vines. 

The Gentiles had been very grateful to their neigh- 
bors. To Elder Reber, who, when he had heard of her 
illness, had sent his entire assortment of wives to her 
assistance, and to Bishop Horner, who had called to 
leave a book on the Faith and a basket of fruit, and 
most of all to gentle old Anne. 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

The neighborhood into which the Gentiles had 
moved was in the older portion of the city, and their 
neighbors were all devotees of the Temple. They had 
learned later that the Gentiles, who of recent years had 
flocked in such numbers to the "garden," had built 
their homes to the north and east of the city. 

"But," the Gentile lady had said to her husband, in 
discussing their location, "no people could have been 
more kind, and just as soon as I am well enough I 
shall go to see them, just as I should if they were 
Methodists." 

Her husband's eyes twinkled. "Will you call on 
them separately or ensemble?" he asked. 

"I don't know just how I shall manage the Rebers," 
his wife said, laughing ; "but there is only one of Mrs. 
Smedgely, you know." 

"I wonder why? Her husband is one of the old 
school of saints ; an elder, or something," her husband 
said, adding: "Why don't you ask her?" 

"Some day I may," the Gentile lady answered seri- 
ously. "I love to hear her talk. When I was suffering 
her talk soothed me like an opiate." 

To-day, when she sat and embroidered, and old 
Anne rocked and knit, she ventured the question tact- 
fully: "Does a woman feel right — er — happy after — 
if her husband marries another wife?" 

Anne laughed ; her laugh, like her talking-voice, had 
a peculiarly pleasant sound. 

"Polygamy was one of the most sacred teachings of 
our faith," she said. "But the way women feel about 
it, that depends on the individual." 

"But," and the gentle Gentile blushed a deep, shamed 
red, "is it, can it be true that — that — it was the custom 

8 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

for — for the last wife to bathe the next wife's feet, as 
a sign of submission to the law of the church ?" 

"True enough," assented Anne cheerfully. 

"But can any woman, no matter what her faith, do 
such an unnatural thing willingly ?" 

Anne laughed at her earnestness. "That depends on 
the individual, too," she said. "I mind when Sister 
S'lomy's husband brought his second wife home. They 
live over there 'cross the street ; no, not in that house, 
that's Pages ; in the one next, that old one, the one with 
the three doors (the door this way is S'lomy's apart- 
ment). Well, as I said, S'lomy an' him had lived so 
long alone together, that S'lomy had got sorter uppity, 
and made some brags ; so, when Brother Sam came 
back from Moab, fetchin' a new wife, we wondered 
how Sister S'lomy 'd take it. She came over for a 
wettin' of tea the very next mornin', an' I couldn't for- 
bear askin' her teasin' like, 'Well, Sister S'lomy, have 
you washed the new sister's feet?' 

"S'lomy always bites off her words short when she 
is riled. 'Yes,' she snaps, 'I washed her feet, but T 
slapped her face, too/ " 

The Gentile looked up from her embroidery with un- 
certain questioning into Anne's humorous old face, then 
she threw back her head and laughed until the tears 
rolled down her cheeks. Anne joined somewhat hesi- 
tatingly in her mirth. 

"Some don't feel so," she said deprecatingly. 
"S'lomy is dreadful spirited." 

"She must be," agreed the lady. She hesitated, and 
blushed again. "But you " 

"Oh, me," Anne said; then was silent. Dropping 
her knitting in her lap, she folded her hard, work-cal- 

9 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

loused hands one over the other in her lap, and sat 
looking with dreamy intentness at the mountains, which 
rose above them like a serried, broken wall around the 
city. The Gentile's eyes followed hers up the rugged 
sides, and rested on a deep, shadowy canon, running 
like a scar down the side of the mountain. 

"There, up that hollow — clear on — farther yet than 
that big boulder, clear past that point where you see 
them red shadows — there is where I had my revela- 
tion," said old Anne, "an' it's because of that," with a 
look at once sad and triumphant, "that I have been 
Jonas' only wife." She picked up her knitting and knit 
off two or three needles before she spoke again. "I was 
born here in Salt Lake. My mother pushed a hand- 
cart across the plains in '56 to get here. It is the same 
garden that Adam and Eve was put out of, you know." 
Her visitor nodded, and Anne went on: "My father 
was a bishop in the church; he had seven wives and 
forty children. We were very poor ; it looked some in 
the early years that we was all to starve. We children 
all started to work, almost as soon as we could walk, 
for our keep. One of my brothers went with a man to 
Pueblo. He came back when I was about fourteen, 
and came to see me at the place I was workin' at. He 
was the first to tell me about other people and ways 
than our own. I went to walk with him down by the 
Jordan River, and when we was standin' on the bridge, 
lookin' up toward the mountains, he told me about 
Pueblo, how it was there. There was only one woman 
for every man, he said (here in Salt Lake there were 
seven), and not many children, and, he said, lookin' 
down at my chapped, bare feet (I hadn't no shoes — yes, 
though it was late fall and there was black frost on 

10 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the bridge), not any of them went barefoot, but all 
had shoes, an' scarce any of them went workin', even 
them that was bigger than him an' me. I felt a kind 
of choking feelin', kind of like my heart was swelling 
up, or something. I was still looking at the mountain, 
because all the time Artie was talkin' I kept seein' the 
strangest thing. 

"Seemed as if there was a procession of people walk- 
in' on an' on up the canon ; a man an' a woman, a man 
an' a woman. There didn't seem to be no beginning, 
or no end, but always those two, side by side, a man an' 
a woman. 

"When I spoke my voice sounded queer, for it felt 
like my heart was moving up, almost in my throat, 
choking me. 

" 'Artie,' I says, 'that is the way I am goin' to do, 
when I get married ; I'm goin' to be the only one ; I 
won't have no sisters, an' all my children are goin' to 
have shoes.' 

" 'Some folks do/ Artie said. 

"I had to haste back to work, but as I was goin' I 
looked back to the hills once, an' I could still see them, 
them men an' women. 'I'll be like that/ I says 
aloud ; it was a sort of prayer an' a promise. 

"The next year I married Jonas, and the next (when 
I was sixteen) I had twin babies. I thanked God for 
two things ; that they was boys, an' that there was two 
of them. I don't want to say anything against God 
(He has interceded for me, weak, sinful woman that 
I am), but when I was sufferin' my first agony, I says 
to Jonas, says I, 'Any one would know God was a 
man, or He wouldn't a made it so fearful hard on 
women/ Jonas is a terrible religious man, an' he 

II 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

turned white when I said that. 'Don't, Anne,' he fairly 
begged ; 'don't talk so, an' I'll do anything in the world 
for you/ 

" Then/ says I, seeing my advantage, 'promise that 
you'll never take another wife, not while I live. The 
children I'm willin' to bear — for you an' the glory of 
Zion, but I'll let no other woman bear them for you.' 
I guess I was gettin' some fevered, for I see Sister 
Sary, who was waitin' on me, motion to him, an' he 
says, quick like, 'No, Anne, there never will/ 

"I rested on his word, an' every time my children 
came I prayed there would be two of them, at once. 
When we had been married six years we had five chil- 
dren, two pair of twin boys an' my little Maidie. 
Maidie was about six months old when Sister Julia 
come over one mornin' an' says, seemed kind of spite- 
ful like, 'Brother Jonas has a new wife ; I seen them 
down street. You'll have to get at an' freshen up the 
east rooms for her. He'll fetch her home to-night/ 

"I had my Maidie in my lap. I was knittin' a sock 
for Jonas, an' she kept grabbin' at the needles, an' 
cooin'. I could hear her coo right through Sister 
Julia's words. It seemed as though she had been talk- 
in' an' lookin' at me hours, an' that she had said 
everything. 

"I picked the baby up in my arms (she seemed like 
she was so heavy, all at once, that I could scarcely lift 
her) an' made my way to the door. I called to Sister 
S'lomy's Beda, who was standin' in their door; I had 
to call three or four times before she heard, my lips 
was so hard an' stiff. 

"Sister Julia looked at me, an' says : 'You must have 
a sore throat, Anne/ 

12 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"'Why?' I said. 

" 'Because your voice sounds so queer/ she made 
answer. 

"I said no word to her, but spoke to little Beda, who 
had just come in. 'Beda,' says I, 'I'll give you two 
pieces of ginger cake if you stay an' mind Maidie for 
me/ Sister S'lomy's was powerful poor them days, an' 
the children wasn't used to sweetened dough, so she 
promised joyful. I gave her Maidie, an', not stoppin' 
to say a single word to Sister Julia, or to put anything 
on my head, I ran out, an' fast as I could run, I rushed 
on out to the river , on up the canon where, when Artie 
an' me had talked that day, I had sensed the vision 
of them men an' women. I didn't know why I went, 
but something made me. I ran, an' cried out wild 
things as I went. The sharp rocks an' briers caught 
at my hands an' dress, but I felt no hurt. I was wild, 
but sure, sure that I would see something. I didn't 
know what, but something that would take that awful 
feelin' out of my heart. 

"I went on, rushin' up an' up. It almost seemed as 
if I was gettin' closer to God. When I got to the top, 
clear up where the snow never melts, where I could 
make Him hear, I would ask Him what He meant. I 
wouldn't have felt no fear — not of the whole host of 
heaven — not then. 

"I never got to the top, though; I fell down just 
when I got to the snow-line. I tried to get up, but I 
couldn't. My heart seemed, all at once, to just 
close up my breath. I couldn't so much as lift my 
hand. 

"I looked up, into the sparklin', dazzlin' brightness 
of the mountain-top, an' I saw them again ! The same 

13 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

procession — a man an' a woman, a man an' a woman ! 
They seemed, somehow, to be dressed in the light — I'd 
admire to make it clear to you if I could — I could see 
the sun, an' the blue shadows back of them, but I 
sensed them plain. 

"An' — an' then I heard a voice, deep an' soothin' ; it 
was sayin' part of the last Sunday's readin', 'Lo, I 
am with ye alway, even unto the end.' I began to 
breathe, soft an' easy, just as my Maidie did when she 
dropped, smilin', to sleep; an' it seemed that a wind, 
soft an' sweet as her breath, came gently down the 
canon, an' that voice, sweet as the cooin' of doves, 
spoke in it, so low I could scarce hear it, but I knew 
who it was, an' got my comfort. I went to sleep. 

"When I woke it was dark ; no moon or stars, but 
pitchy black. I couldn't find my way, so bided 'til 
sunup. It wasn't long until I see her comin', like a 
lovely lady, I thought, throwin' off the night covers. 
I stayed to watch her dress (I was full of fancies, an' 
happy). First she put on soft, pinky petticoats, but 
they didn't suit her, so she threw them away — up in the 
sky — an' kept puttin' on others, brighter an' brighter, 
until she got a flamin' red, an' then she put on a dress 
of gold, that made me glad, some way, as if she had 
put it on for me. 

"Then I went home. 

"When I got back to my house I crept up soft an' 
looked in the east window. She was there. She was 
just a young thing, nothing but a child. She was 
asleep, but I could see that she had been crying ; there 
was a pinched look about her mouth an' red spots, like 
fever marks, on her cheeks. I knew she didn't love 
Jonas, an' a feelin' almost tender come over me for her. 

14 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

I thought of my Maidie, an' I says, soft an' low, 'My 
poor girl !' 

"Then I walked around an' opened the door. 

"Jonas looked up, his face like snow. 'Anne,' says 
he, chokin', 'Anne?' 

" 'Yes, it's Anne,' I said, smilin'. 

" 'Where ?' says he, 'where in God's name have you 
been?' 

" 'Up in the mountains, where all prophets go,' I 
says. 'I've had a revelation.' 

"Jonas looked at me, his face whiter than ever. 'You 
look,' he said, 'as though you'd been to heaven.' 

" 'I ain't,' I says, 'but I think I have almost seen its 
door.' 

"I sat down by him an' held his hand ; it shook just 
like old Bishop Farnley's, who had palsy. I told him 
all I'd seen an' heard. 'For them that don't sense sin,' 
I said, 'maybe it ain't sin, but for us, I've sensed it, 
an' if we go higher, we must go just us alone. I've 
seen, an' the path is only wide enough for two.' " 

The voice of old Anne trembled away into silence. 

The Gentile lady looked at her forgotten embroidery 
with eyes that saw the familiar pattern as from a long 
distance. She tried to match the green of a leaf, which 
blurred and widened grotesquely in the mist through 
which she looked. She could not speak, and, for the 
moment, dared not look at old Anne, but she felt, from 
an inner sense, a reflection of the light on the old 
woman's face, with her remembering eyes turned to the 
silent majesty of the abiding hills. 

The story needed but a sentence to complete it. It 
was added presently, after the knitting had been re- 
sumed, with a patient sigh, as from one who has seen 

15 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the heights and descended again to the valley of life. 
"I said to Jonas, 'Jonas/ said I, 'that little girl in 
there will be our daughter. You mind?' An' Jonas 
said, speakin' slow an* solemn as if it was meetin', 
'She won't ever be anything else.' " 



16 



II. 

THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

The way of peace they know not; and there is no judg- 
ment in their goings ; they have made them crooked paths ; 
whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. — Isaiah lix. 8. 



In a tumble-down, decaying house, which looks down 
on the river Jordan, winding like a soiled gray ribbon 
at the bottom of the hills, and up to where their white- 
trimmed tops embroider the sky, lived Grandma West, 
and Sister Millie, and Auntie May, and, for the present 
(because she had nowhere else to go), Sylvia Smith. 

Sylvia was a newcomer in Zion. She had come with 
a party from Australia, converted to the faith by the 
eloquence of a well-favored young missionary. She 
had been imbibing the teachings and enjoying the com- 
panionship of the chosen for less than a year, when on 
this day, as on many a weary one preceding, she tossed 
feverishly on grandma's best bed and prayed monot- 
onously and hopelessly for death. 

Somewhere, before the Book of Mormon and the 
Doctrine and Covenants had become her entire literary 
diet, and she had learned how sufficient for all mental 
and spiritual needs were these inspired volumes, Sylvia 
had read that with honor all was lost, and odd as it 
seemed, her honor seemed to be regarded as lost, al- 
though she had only poured the red of the stain of 
shame over the white of her virgin soul in response to 

17 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

a revelation from God Himself to one of His favored 
followers, a man who had stood at the helm of the 
saintly craft of Mormonism for so long that his hair 
was snow-white in the service, at the time the Lord 
had given him the vision of Sylvia Smith. He had 
hastened to the factory where his influence had ob- 
tained for her a position at six dollars a week (less, 
of course, the tithing, which the faithful collected from 
her employers, to save her the trouble of counting it 
out). A great system, the tithing, and one which has 
ever the fascination of mystery as to what becomes of 
it. 



Sylvia was excused from her work to speak to the 
bishop. She had listened with a fast beating heart to 
the fact that God had mirrored her face on the spiritual 
lens which He showed His servant, and that the revela- 
tion meant great glory for her in the day, now fast ap- 
proaching, when the king was to appear to reward the 
righteous. 

Now, sacrifice is a strange thing. As long, as it is in 
the abstract, how we glory in it ; but when it comes 
down to the concrete me, here, now, it is terrible ; most 
of us all would relinquish the almost certain light of a 
hard won heaven for the dark of a lost earth when 
we hear the roar of the lions and the rending of sac- 
rificial limbs. 

Poor Sylvia clung desperately to earth, no vision of 
a near enthronement in heaven could soothe her shame 
and self-loathing. She wished wickedly that she had 
never seen the bishop, never left Australia, let the one 
means of salvation pass, and stayed far away from 

18 



THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

Zion. Especially and more ardently did she wish these 
wicked things after the bishop, being as it were a very 
tool under the thumb of the spirit, got a call which 
took him on some missionary work in England, and 
she was thrown out of her position. 

This is a strange world, and Sylvia soon found that 
no one else seemed to know anything about the bishop's 
revelation, and although she had only followed the ex- 
pressed desire of the Almighty, not one door was open 
to her. Even in Zion, which, you know, is the ante- 
chamber of heaven itself, this is an awful position to 
be in. Why, not one of the holiest men seemed able to 
help her, times were very close with them all, and it 
was not until she found refuge with Grandma, who, 
if you will believe, was one of the bishop's first wives, 
did the poor girl find so much as a place to lay her 
head. 



The whole affair might so easily have been hushed 
up (so many are) had Sylvia had the common decency 
to accuse some already lost Gentile, instead of insisting 
that it was the good old bishop who was responsible 
for her prospective halo of motherhood. 

After much discussing of the knotty problem, it was 
decided to send for the bishop, insisting on his imme- 
diate return to Zion. 

The bishop returned from the green vineyard of 
England questioning and indignant. 

The good book says that children are a heritage of 
the Lord, and that man is blessed who has a quiver full. 
Now, the bishop had so many in his quiver that he was 
— must be — many times blessed on this account alone. 

19 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

In fact, so ardently had he fulfilled this desire of his 
Master — as expressed to his seer and revelator, Joseph 
Smith — that he had long lost count of the number, 
knowing that they were counted to his credit on the 
great record. So, to be called back from his labors 
for so trivial a matter as the one in hand, showed him 
that things had come to a pretty pass in Zion. 

Insomuch as the girl had found refuge with three of 
his former wives, and that to see her he might have 
to face them, especially Grandma, added insult to the 
bishop's injury. 

He had not seen Grandma for a score of years, and 
between the two was a trifling matter, still unadjusted, 
that whenever he was forced to think of it, caused a 
warm feeling around his collar, most uncomfortable. 

But Sylvia, with the lack of consideration for his 
feelings which she had showed from the very first, had 
given birth to a child a day before he reached Zion 
from abroad, and so taking advantage of the way her 
sex is favored, since the invasion of the godless Gen- 
tiles, insisted that she could not go to the bishop and 
that the bishop must come to her. And there was 
nothing else for him to do. 

Sister Millie and Auntie May both worked in the 
factory, for a mean pittance of wage and the reward 
of virtue. Grandma knit countless socks and mittens, 
this being almost the only remunerative work her rheu- 
matic old hands were capable of doing. 

While Grandma knit she thought, and while she 
thought she often cried. She did to-day, as she sat 
where she could get the light from the window and 
rock the little baby in the cradle. The cradle, a clumsy, 
home-made affair of wood, was the same that had held 

20 



THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

Grandma's brood of children, and Sister Millie's, and 
Auntie May's, and now this strange, white-faced girl's. 
The children were all the bishop's, and Grandma had 
rocked them all, just as she was rocking this, knitting, 
and sometimes crying, sometimes for the babies and 
sometimes for the mothers. One can knit and cry so 
easily. 



Sylvia watched the tears rolling down the old wom- 
an's wrinkled cheeks with a growing wonder ; it seemed 
to her that she had all the trouble there was worth 
crying about, and she wondered that a woman as old 
as Grandma should care enough about anything to 
cry about it, that she continued to do so, patiently and 
helplessly, began to irritate the girl past endurance. 

"You don't need to fret none about me," she said 
ungraciously. "I can stand what I have to without 
sympathy." 

Grandma smiled, and wiped her cheek with the leg 
of the sock she was knitting. "We can all do that, 
honey," she said, stooping down and smoothing the 
covers over the sleeping baby, "we can all bear our 
own sorrow, but sometimes it seems we cain't anoth- 
er s. 

"I hope you wasn't crying for me," a note of appeal 
thrilling through the bravado of her voice. 

"No, not for you," Grandma said, "but for my hus- 
band." 

The girl raised herself on one thin, sharp elbow. 
"For that lying old scoundrel ?" she cried. 

That is just what she called the bishop, and it cannot 
be pleaded in extenuation that she was delirious — she 

21 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

knew what she said, and Grandma knew what she 
meant, for she answered quietly: "No, not for the 
bishop, but for my own husband." 

"Your what ?" the girl asked, momentarily interested 
in other affairs than her own. 

"My own husband,'' Grandma repeated musingly. 
"The man I loved and who loved me. We were mar- 
ried in Missouri, and came here to Salt Lake after 
we were converted to the faith." 

"Did he die ?" the girl asked, as Grandma paused and 
counted in a half-whisper as she "turned" the heel of 
the sock. 

"I thought he did," she answered, "although they 
tried to make me think he had deserted me, as though 
I'd believe that ! But he didn't come home one night 
to supper, and I could learn nothing for days. I was 
almost wild when bishop came to see me and said 
he had had a revelation from God that he was to take 
me to wife." 

"Why, that's just what the old skunk told me," the 
girl cried excitedly. 

Grandma laughed. Her laugh needed no comment. 

"I was young, then, full young, and I thought if 
Ralph was gone I didn't care what became of me ; so, 
well, he fetched me here to live, with Sister Susie, his 
first wife, who God, in His mercy, called soon after. 
One day Elder Rooker's wife came in and she said that 
Ralph was in town, rampagin' around, looking for me. 
I jumped up, wild as a deer, yelling at her to know 
where he was. My heart was almost breaking with 
love for him, but she and Susie held me down, and she 
said : ' 'Taint no use to struggle against the church, 
Lida. My man told me that they had kept him out of 

22 



THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

the way till bishop got you, and if you go to acting up, 
why they will put him out of the way to stay put. 
What bishop wants, he gets.' " 

The old lady's hands were trembling so that her knit- 
ting-needles kept up a little click as they hit against 
each other. The girl, forgetting her weakness, raised 
herself again on her elbow. 

"The devils," she screamed, "I'd— I'd " 

"No, you wouldn't," Grandma interrupted her. The 
baby cried, and she put her knitting down on the win- 
dow-sill, and, stooping over, picked it up in her mother- 
ing old arms, soothing it with little mouthing coos. 
"You couldn't 'a' done more than I could," she went on. 
"I got down on my knees and begged the bishop, 
prayed him to let me go, but he said if I didn't submit 
to the will of God that they would take Ralph and — 
and cut off his ears, and — oh, pitying God ! I can't tell 
the horrible threats that he made, until I — why, I had 
to submit. I couldn't do anything else. My only 
comfort was that I was saving Ralph suffering, and 
that some day, maybe near, maybe far, that God would 
bring the light. My mother used to say that 'the Lord 
wouldn't let that goat's tail grow too long, or it would 
switch its own eyes out.' But it has been long, very 
long." 

"What has?" 

"The day of His judgment," she answered softly. 

"Sometimes I have thought that those awful mon- 
sters that are described in Revelations, in the Bible, 
describes some of the men who used to run things in 
our church." 

The baby began to cry again, and Grandma carried 
it out in the "lean-to," where a concoction, intended 

23 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

for its delectation, was brewing on the back of the 
stove. As she moved about the girl heard her singing 
in a sweet old quaver : 

"Oh, that we in the day of His coming may say, 
I have fought my way through, I have finished 
The work Thou didst set me to do." 

"Grandma, Grandma, come quick," called the girl 
excitedly. "The bishop is just turning in at the door." 

The bishop carried his three-score years almost 
jauntily. He was upright, vigorous, and well dressed. 
His aura exuded a state of comfortable well being, 
despite the fact that, for the moment, he looked some- 
what flustered. He was flanked on one side by a tall, 
spare man, who wore a gray beard for a shirt-front and 
used it for a cuspidor, and on the other by a nervous 
little man with a red mustache. 



Grandma opened the door. The bishop hardly knew 
her, such a change had the last few years made in her. 
She looked a woman old in body and broken in spirit. 
The bishop's momentary scrutiny of her sad old face 
reassured him; he felt that, after all, he had little to 
fear from her. As for the girl on the bed — that might 
take a few greenbacks, but here experience gave him 
confidence. Of course, he owed it to the fair name 
of the church to induce her to shift the responsibility 
of paternity to some Gentile — that was always a suc- 
cess — and, as for squaring himself with the church, 
well, the bishop knew what he knew. 

He found the girl stubborn past all belief. Each gen- 
eration of women grew worse and harder to control. 

24 



THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

The bishop had really a bad half-hour. The presence 
of Grandma irritated him dreadfully, too, not that she 
said anything, but she was there, and, as he knew, it 
is much harder to control a woman if one of her own 
sex is present, and Grandma's presence was menacing. 
He actually sweated before she said a word, and after; 
well, he got so hot he almost suffocated ; but he had to 
listen. 

The old lady spoke so quietly that any one in the 
next room would have thought that she was discussing 
the weather, but she wasn't; she had gone back a 
quarter of a century, and was reminding the bishop of 
certain matters that he had quite concluded to forget. 
It was bad enough to listen himself, but to see the 
expressions on the faces of the other listeners was 
maddening. He felt forced to interpose. "Come, 
come, Lida," he said, " a jealous woman's tongue is 
best silent. Supposing you do know some — er — mis- 
takes I have made long ago, w^hat are you to pass judg- 
ment? A body would think you was Christ Him- 
self." 

"Christ's mother was a woman," Grandma answered 
quietly, "and I ain't figured out yet how God would 'a' 
sent a Savior to the world if there hadn't been a 
woman to bear Him. Women has rights, if your 
church did try to take them away. The reason I have 
for telling these things before Brother Smith and 
Brother Baldwin and this last victim of your low lies, 
is that I want witnesses on both sides : your side and 
mine." 

The bishop's lips were white. "Witnesses ?" he whis- 
pered. 

"Witnesses," Grandma repeated. "I been gathering 

25 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

evidence against you for a long time, and this last," 
she motioned toward the bed, "was all I needed. The 
prosecuting attorney has evidence enough against you 
to hang you or send you up for State's keep for the rest 
of your wicked life." 



The bishop was plainly terrified. He looked around 
as if for a means of escape, and, seeing none, dropped 
on his shaking knees before the old woman and begged, 
with tears, for mercy. She shifted the baby from one 
shoulder to the other, and looked down on him calmly. 
"Do you mind the time I was on my knees to you?" 
she asked. He nodded miserably. 

"Give me back my young husband, and my own 
life, and I'll let you go free." 

He mumbled despairingly, again his shifting eye 
sought the doorway. 

"You can't get out that way," the old lady said. 
"There are detectives watching every move you make. 
Get up off of your knees, you old coward." A sudden 
sharp change in her voice. "I ain't going to have you 
hung or your ears cut off or your eyes poked out — as 
you deserve ! I'll leave your eternal judgment to the 
Master. But you are never going to set foot in the 
meeting-house again; you are going to resign from 
all your business, and I am going to pay men with your 
money, to watch every move you make. 

"You are going to provide for Millie, and May, and 
their children, and for this girl here, and you are going 
to acknowledge that you are the father of this child." 

The bishop wrung his hands. "It will ruin me," he 
whined. 

26 



THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT. 

"The church will excommunicate you — I'll see to 
that," went on the stern old voice. " 'Tain't that you 
mustn't commit adultery, but that you mustn't be found 
out at it. You've been found out." 

The bishop sat down weakly and wiped his eyes. 
He looked piteously from one to the other. "Ain't you 
got any mercy?" he begged. "Ill make amends. I'll 
give half my money, only don't, for God's sake, dis- 
grace me publicly." 

"I'm doing what I be for God's sake," Grandma 
said inexorably, with a tightening of her shrunken lips. 
"The general public won't know much of this. I ain't 
no publicity expert, and as long as you walk the road 
I've set out for you, not so many outside of the church 
will know that you have got your come-up-ence at last. 
But don't forget for a minute that the law men are 
watching you. You can go now ; a man will call at 
your office for the money we want to start on." 

The bishop leaned heavily on the arms of his coun- 
selors as he walked out of the rickety old gate. He 
knew he must do just as the old woman said ; he dare 
not do otherwise. He felt old, and broken, and friend- 
less. The day of his judgment had come. 



27 



III. 

THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

Religion had been Jane's watchword. One of her 
earliest recollections was a shuddering watchfulness of 
the sky, which, the elder said, was one day to "roll up 
like a scroll," disclosing — Jane would close her light- 
fringed lids over her big eyes, in sudden terror of 
what it might disclose, of mystery, and awfulness, and 
dread. 

The wicked were to be burned as chaff; and the 
wicked were those who gave heed to other than spirit- 
ual matters. Wicked, indeed, was the child who looked 
covetously at the jar of striped peppermints on the 
shelf at the corner store, or who dreamed of a bow of 
blue ribbons tied to her scanty braid. A lack of spirit- 
uality alone could account for such licentiousness, and 
the only hope lay in added prayer and seeking after 
righteousness. 

Jane never knew which she would rather believe, 
like her mother, that the wicked were to be burned as 
chaff ; or, like her father, that they were to stay forever 
and ever in a lake of fire. There were disadvantages 
in either. Then, too, she never knew which day was 
more to be dreaded, the day when she went to meeting 
with her mother and looked at all of the other mothers 
and daughters clad in soberest drab, with never a bow 
or a gleaming brooch ; or the day she went to town with 
her father, where she was sure to see, and be sorely 

28 



THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

tempted by, a fluttering streamer on some hat, a col- 
ored bow of ribbon on some braid, or distractingly 
pretty "edging" on some small petticoat or "panties," 
at which Jane would gaze with fascinated eye and al- 
most decide on the lake of fire. 

Her mother got weary of "watching," and it was 
not long after they had lain her down to wait, near the 
sacred Mount Olivet, that her father, too, went seeking 
light in the outer darkness, leaving Jane alone, with the 
Rocky Mountain farm and a little hoard of money ; also 
with portions of the Bible memorized so that she could 
say them backward. 

* * >k * * * * 

Jane was twenty-five, and had been an old maid 
fifteen years, when she got a letter from her cousin, 
Sarah Bartlett, in New Orleans. This, in itself, was an 
event, but its contents were a dispensation. Sarah be- 
longed to that portion of her father's family, who, ac- 
cording to her mother, had little wheat among them 
all, that in the last appraisement they would all go as 
chaff, pure and simple. Pushing a hand-cart across the 
desert, in search of the long-lost garden, had not made 
Jane's mother broad in her views ; but after her death, 
Jane's father had spoken of them with a yearning af- 
fection ; so, although Jane knew they were chaff, still, 
the kindly tone in the letter appealed to her, and 
brought a warm little glow to her heart that grew 
warmer each time she read it over. This was so often 
that she was ready for bed that night before she re- 
membered that she had not even opened the Deseret 
News or read a word in the Book of Mormon. Thus 
had Sarah's influence begun. 

Sarah had written inviting, almost insisting, on 
29 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Jane paying her a visit. She could not leave, as she 
would like to do, to visit her cousin, Jane, on account 
of being tied down by her business. She kept a milli- 
nery and ladies' furnishing shop, she explained, and did 
a very comfortable business. Her parents had died and 
her brothers and sisters had moved away, and she was 
lonely for some of her own kin. A letter from their 
cousin, Melissy Fairview, had told her that Jane was 
unmarried and alone, so she wrote at once to ask her 
to come to New Orleans and stay as long as she could 
with her affectionate cousin, Sarah Bartlett. Jane 
went. Sarah was not better prepared for Jane than was 
Jane for Sarah. But Sarah had hopes and Jane fears, 
in the first hour of their meeting. Sarah had not been 
a woman's furnisher for upward of twenty years with- 
out having gained an optimistic knowledge of aids to 
nature, and her mind immediately leaped to certain 
shelves and boxes in her shop with reference to Jane. 
Jane had not had the sin of worldliness poured over 
and jammed down and heaped up in her consciousness 
for a quarter of a century, not to recognize in Sarah 
the very personification of sin ; in her voluminous dra- 
peries, her velvet hat, with its long plume, well-gloved 
hands, her lace-trimmed handkerchief, which, as she 
held it daintily to her carefully powdered nose, smelled 
plainly of "scent." Jane felt the same fascination for 
Sarah's fineness that she had years ago when she had 
looked with lustful eyes at the bows of pink ribbon 
on the braids of the worldly — felt and knew she must 
watch and pray, lest a love of carnal things grow up 
in her heart. 

******* 
30 



THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

She was sadly bewildered by the din of the city. 
But Sarah, although fairly flaunting the lusts of the 
flesh before her eyes, looked kind, and amid all this 
strangeness, familiar, from some subtle resemblance to 
her father; so she followed her meekly. 

Sarah was tactful, having catered to feminine whims 
for years, and she guessed much of Jane's inner atti- 
tude by her outer humility of attire ; so in her easy, big- 
hearted way she dispelled some of her visitor's nerv- 
ousness and had her quite at her ease by the time they 
had rested in her tiny flat above the shop, and chatted 
over their tea. 

Had Jane died and wakened with either the sound 
of harps in her ears or the smell of brimstone in her 
nostrils, she would have felt a certain sense of famil- 
iarity, having heard both states of being so often de- 
scribed; but this world, which her visit to her cousin 
Sarah opened up, even her wildest imagination had 
never pictured. 

Sarah was a very busy woman, overseeing every bit 
of her considerable business, waiting on the trade in a 
rustling silk gown in the afternoons, and directing the 
work in the trimming-room mornings ; keeping her flat 
in spotless order, and preparing her simple meals, gave 
her just leisure enough to enjoy to the full the society 
of a few friends, an occasional trip to the theater, a 
trolley ride, or a cozy evening alone, over a gas-log in 
her bit of a parlor, with a pile of fashion books for 
company and ideas. 

Jane at once relieved her cousin of the housekeeping 
cares, but they took so little of her time that she spent 
hours together gazing out of the windows at the mot- 
ley procession of strange people, and in looking over 

3i 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Sarah's few books. These were as far removed from 
the accustomed grooves of her literary experience as 
were the gaudily dressed Creoles from the somberly 
clad devotees of her memory. One book in particular 
held her enthralled, although she understood the mean- 
ing of its words but slightly. The very name, "The 
Rubaiyat," sounded like the "black hand society," but 
oh, the charm of it! 

Sometimes on dull mornings she would go down to 
the shop with Sarah and look at the wonderful things 
displayed in the cases. Sometimes she would touch 
lingeringly a bit of bright ribbon or soft velvet with 
her little, work-hardened fingers. 

"Do you ever think," she asked her cousin one day, 
going into the latter's dressing-room when she was 
preparing to go out with some friend, "that it is wicked 
to wear colors and jewelry — and — try to look nice?" 

Sarah turned from the contemplation of her plump, 
comely face in the mirror and looked at Jane, first with 
amusement in her eyes and then with a tightening of 
her lips, for Jane's prudery was beginning to get on 
her nerves. 

"No," she said firmly. "I don't; didn't God paint 
the lily? Didn't He make the grass green and the sky 
blue, and put the red on the robin's breast? Why." 
she added, as she adjusted a quivering wire rat in her 
round "roughed" pompadour, "I sold a false front 
to the bishop's wife yesterday." 

Jane sat down weakly. At last the foundations of 
her world trembled and her "sky rolled up like a 
scroll." Her ego quivered with the shock. 

A bishop's wife and a false front! 

"You should wear one yourself," Sarah continued, 

32 



THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

calmly dipping her chamois first in flesh color and then 
in red, and flashing a magically improved complexion 
upon poor Jane, whose cheeks were as innocent of tint 
as her virgin bosom was of contour and her soul of 
sin. 

"Soon as the Mardi Gras is over, and we get set- 
tled down, I'm going to fix you up," Sarah went on, 
turning her eyes considerately away from Jane's burn- 
ing face. "I am sorry I have to be gone to-night. I 
wanted to take you out to see the fun. Every one 
wears a mask to-night, you know, and cuts up any dido 
they feel like. 

"Come on down, and I'll show you some costumes 

that the girls unpacked this morning. They are the 

cutest ever." 

* %. * * * * * 

Jane looked and marveled at the wonderful things 
Sarah put in her lap — beautiful garments, gaudy as a 
butterfly's wings with tinsel and color. She touched 
them almost fearfully. But "the vine had struck a 
fiber." New thoughts and sensations ran like quick- 
silver through her veins. Her unlived youth seemed 
to arise through the mists of years and to look at her 
with piteous, pleading eyes from the little heap of gay 
garments in her lap. 

New Orleans, at Mardi Gras, is shaken from its 
usual languor and metamorphosed into a scene of 
gayety. The wine of life is poured in rich libations 
to the jocund gods. The body is laid aside, and the 
spirit — the spirit of youth, and frolic, and carnival — 
reigns. The bright pageantry, the gay music, the fan- 
tastically clad street dancers — everywhere is color and 
movement and boisterous joy of living. 

33 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Jane spent the day at the window, looking out. Her 
soul, newly awakened, seemed to move and fret in her 
body. She was afraid for life. 

When the last of the girls had left the shop for the 
day, she went down guardedly to brood over the mys- 
teries in box and case. She hoped all the beautiful 
things had not been sold. With a thrill of delight she 
saw, as she lit the gas, that one quaint red gown yet 
remained. Her hands touched the silken folds tenderly. 
A saleswoman had evidently had the entire outfit co- 
ercingly displayed, for they were all together, the 
short, kilted skirts, the beruffled waist, the red mask, 
the little shoes with the big gilt buckles, and the crim- 
son, silken hose. Ah, Jane, Jane ! 

Jane's hands shook as she fingered them over, the 
dress, the shoes, and the silken hose. The sound of 
laughter, of music, of hurrying feet, beat against the 
closed door. 

Jane sank trembling to her knees. She tried to pray, 
but a madness was upon her and she could form no 
words. She rose, and, gathering up the box and a 
hastily selected article here and there, went with fleet 
footsteps up the stairs to Sarah's dressing-room. 

She tore off her plain gray gown, her modest shoes, 
and her serviceable petticoat; she loosed her scanty, 
drab hair, and gazed long and long into the glass. But 
she could not find herself in the reflection ; a stranger's 
eye, bright with daring, and a rejuvenated face, with 
hot, red cheeks, looked from it. She tried to cool the 
cheeks with the palms of her hands, but they, too, 
were burning — burning with eagerness to begin the 
task that strange spirit prompted. First, to comb out 
the meek, smooth locks and "rough" them shamelessly 

34 



THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

into a pompadour; to struggle desperately with a 
whalebone of vanity and draw in her meager waist to 
fit the clasp of that knee-short skirt ; to pull on the long, 
red stockings and buckle on the shoes, too — ah! Jane 
had learned, or, perhaps, something in her which she 
had forgotten, remembered. This strange creature, 
with shining eyes and eager, tremulous mouth, did not 
pause even at squeezing the atomizer and sprinkling 
"scent" all over her little beruffled self, or hesitate at 
slipping the mask over her glowing face. 

She went to the window and leaned out. There was 
a throng of revelers in the street. Some one looked 
up and threw a handful of confetti at her. She laughed 
— this strange, strange Jane! and ran with eager feet 
down the stair to the shop, slid back the bolt, and went 
out into the night. 



Such a night ! How far removed from the sanctified, 
silvery light of the moon as it shone on the hillsides 
and in the valleys of her distant home. This night was 
golden. There was an intoxicating fragrance in the 
air from myriads of flowers. Jane crushed some be- 
neath her feet as she stepped giddily on the pavement. 
A float, flower-laden, drawn by white horses, richly 
caparisoned with woven roses, passed her, amid wild 
tooting of horns and shrieks of laughter from its fan- 
tastically clad occupants. A passing troubadour bent 
low to peer into her eyes, and a clown blew his horn 
in her ear. 

The crowd bore her along toward a public park. 
Sometimes she was jostled roughly, and once she 
paused, terror-stricken, the old Jane tremblingly awake 

35 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

in the new Jane's body; but only for an instant, for 
no sooner had the terror come than it was dispelled by 
a broad-shouldered man in a monk's cassock and cowl, 
who took her hand and guided her through the throng. 

Jane looked up into his eyes — and lived. 

She did not know where they went or what they 
said, but she knew that the touch of his hand was 
ecstasy and the sound of his voice magic. For the 
first time in her narrow, restricted life, Jane was con- 
scious of the glory and power of her womanhood. 

They paused near a musically murmuring fountain. 
Memory rose like a mist over the sun of her newly 
found happiness. She knew that she could never sing, 
"Is My Name Written There?" in the old, safe as- 
surance again. But what if it were erased from the 
book of everlasting life ? It was written here, now, in 
one night of vivid, pulsating experience. 

A line from Omar sang itself in her mind. She 
understood it now — she repeated it to her companion : 

"Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend." 
And he had quoted back, with a look that was as the 
warmth of red wine : 

"Oh, my beloved, fill the cup that clears 
To-day of past regrets and future fears." 

Approaching dawn laid her cool fingers on the 
fevered night before Jane found her way — still with her 
masked protector — to the door of her cousin's shop. 
Dawn, and Jane not abed ! Jane, whose wildest festiv- 
ity had been to stay up till ten at a church social ! 

She sat long at the window that morning, clad again 
in her plain, dark clothes, her hair smoothed back in 
its accustomed unbecomingness, and tried to find her- 

36 



THE THREAD OF SCARLET. 

self. She tried prayerfully to pick up the gray threads 
from which the fabric of her life was woven, and to 
go on with the pattern. But this she could never do. 
The thread of scarlet had been woven in. 



37 



IV. 
THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

* * * For he hath clothed me with the garments of 
salvation. * * * He hath covered me with the robes of 
righteousness. * * * — Isaiah lxi. io. 



It was a hot evening early in August when the em- 
ployees thankfully emerged from the sweltering heat 
of the cannery and exchanged the steaming odor of 
tomatoes for the pure air of the outer world. 

There were varying expressions of relief and fa- 
tigue on the heat-flushed faces of the women. Perhaps 
the relief was mirrored strongest on the face of Hilda 
Swanson, the new convert from Sweden, and certainly 
the fatigue showed deepest on the face of the woman 
just behind her, old "Aunt" Lila. 

There was more than fatigue in Aunt Lila's face; 
there was a sad hopelessness as though she looked in- 
ward and saw always the bitter fruitage which had 
grown from the early planting of her soul. 

Her ill-fitting cotton dress was stained with the red 
juice of the tomatoes, which she peeled with stolid pre- 
cision from morning until night. 

Despite the heat, Aunt Lila wore a hat that had been 
blue velvet, and once, so long ago that it had out- 
grown even the suspicion of the reputation, had been 
new. 

38 



THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

Her hands were scarred, and cut, and stained from 
their wearisome toil. 

The new girl looked from the older woman's face to 
her hands, and thought longingly of her native Sweden. 
If this were what it meant, that life which the mission- 
ary had told them about, poor, stupid Hilda failed to 
grasp its meaning. She had worked in Sweden and 
she worked here, but there there had been much com- 
pany and merry-making with the youth of her kind, 
that youth who cared nothing for the Grail of the 
Spirit or even knew that Christ was to come again in 
seven short years, and select the sheep (the Mormons) 
to sit at His right hand and tell the goats (the Gentiles) 
to about face and depart from Him into unending 
night. 

It had seemed plain to Hilda, and the blue of 
Swedish sky had grown black with dread of that awful 
day which the young missionary, convincing with facts 
and figures, assured her was so soon to dawn. She 
had gone to join His chosen, but instead of making 
ready with white garments and keeping her lamp 
trimmed and burning, she had peeled tomatoes. And 
instead of being soothed by the oil of sanctity, she had 
been appalled by tales of corruption and moral filth 
until she had wondered if, after all, the annointed were 
nearer to His Kingdom than were some of the pure- 
minded youth of her own unconsecrated land. 

She fell into step with old Aunt Lila. "It ban hot," 
she said, by way of conversation. 

"Terrible," agreed Aunt Lila, wiping the sweat from 
her face. 

39 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"My man ban in Salt Lake City lookin' for a yob," 
further informed Hilda. 

"Oh, are you married?" Aunt Lila asked. 

"Oh, yas, a ban canned in the Temple." 

"Canned !" exclaimed Aunt Lila ; then, comprehend- 
ing, her face fell into little lines and wrinkles, which 
showed how it might have looked if life had ever let 
her laugh. 

"You mean sealed," she said. 

"They are yust the same," Hilda insisted, with native 
stubbornness. "Sometime the boss he say seal the 
tomatoes, and sometime he say can." 

"It's just the same. It means that you can't get 
out," Aunt Lila said, the bitterness falling like a veil 
over her face. 

"What say?" 

"Where do you live?" the older woman asked, in- 
stead of repeating her bitter speech. 

"Ve got a room on Twenty-fort Street, over a saloon. 
My man, he drink, sometime a ban so scared." Her 
childish eyes were very wide and wistful. 

"I live out on the bench. If you want, you can stay 
all night with me," Aunt Lila said. 

Hilda caught her breath with a little sob. "A tank 
you ban so goot." 

It was a long walk up to the bench, long and hot, 
but it cost five cents each for them to ride, so Aunt 
Lila thought best to buy an extra loaf of bread against 
the entertainment of her company. 

Aunt Lila had two of the fourteen souls which she 
had furnished with sturdy Mormon bodies still to sup- 
port. These two, a boy and a girl, came out of the 
gate to meet them. 

40 



THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

"This is one of the new girls from the factory," 
their mother said by way of introduction. "You can 
step over to Sister Avory's and get a pint of milk and 
a half-dozen eggs, Willie; tell her maw will pay her 
Saturday night." 

She then took the girl's hat and seated her near the 
open door, where she could get the breeze from the 
canon. She threw her own hat on the bed and pinned 
on an apron. With it, she seemed to put on a certain 
grace of womanliness. 

The Swedish girl's round, blue eyes filled with tears. 

"You ban so goot," she choked. The old woman 
patted her flaxen head. 

"Oh, you poor, poor girl," she said sadly. She 
brooded for a long moment over the girl, and her mis- 
guided type, as did He, who brooded over Jerusalem. 
"How often would I have gathered ye into my arms 
* * * but ye would not." 

She went heavily about the preparation of the simple 
meal. 

% ■%. >K ^ ^ * * 

Hilda helped the little girl wash up the dishes, and 
Aunt Lila sat in the doorway and mended the seat of 
Willie's school pants. When it got too dark for her to 
see she went inside, and getting her little brood to bed 
for the night, she went back to her seat in the doorway, 
but not to work, to think! Oh, God, in mercy! to 
think. She sat until the dusk deepened to dark, until 
the moon arose and silver-coated the mountains and 
made a path of jewels down the river. She thought 
of the poor little convert asleep in her bed, of her chil- 
dren, those who had been called to rest until He 
came. 

41 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Those who were battling with the many-faced host 
of Life's army, of those two asleep in the silent, moon- 
lit room. Then the wheels of time turned backward, 
and she thought of herself, a child in the farmhouse 
in Indiana, of her girlhood, and even now, the memory 
hung like a picture with a gilded background, of her 
first lover, of their walks in fragrant, moonlit country 
lanes. Then of her conversion to Mormonism, of the 
long journey across the plains to reach "the promised 
land." Of the semicircle of covered wagons, of the 
Indians, and how they bought peace by an offering 
from each wagon spread out in pitiful display for their 
haughty inspection. 

Of their arrival in Salt Lake, of their first days 
of religious fervor and rejoicing that their train of sixty 
wagons had reached the city in safety. 

Then, her thoughts trembled before the crowd of 
those other memories ; of the courting of one of the 
holy men of Zion ; of her fear, despair, loathing — and 
marriage in the Temple. Of his taking her to a little 
patch of ground out Corrine way; of the handful of 
chickens, and poorly fed cows with which she was to 
make a living for herself and as many children which 
the good God should send her. 

She thought of the miserable adobe house where 
she lived those toiling days, those anxious days, those 
mad days, until when he had come to see her, she 
turned on him like the very fury of hate, demanding 
her freedom. Heaping awful words of abuse against 
the Holy Faith, against the apostles of the Lord, 
against even the sacredness of the revelation and cove- 
nant of plural marriage. She had even said that she 
didn't believe it was a revelation. 

42 



THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

In her desperation she had threatened him with the 
law of the land. The law of the land ! When he was 
armed with the authority of the Most High ! 

Oh, she had raved ! The memory was with her still. 
It was a case so serious that no man, even one so in- 
experienced in the ways of many wives, could cope with 
alone. So he had gone back to Zion and returned, and, 
with the aid of other holy men, set out to subdue the 
awful spirit and set loose the devil that had come to 
dwell in the person of his seventh wife. 

These men were all experienced in "breaking in" 
obstreperous females. But as a colt will astonish the 
most skilful trainer, so did she astonish and grieve 
those holy men. They had to go unusual lengths to 
subdue her, even to tying a rope around her neck, none 
too laxly, and throwing her into Salt Creek. And even 
though she choked until she was black in the face and 
seemed almost to the point of giving up her awful 
spirit to the avenging God, still was she not subdued 
until to her dying ears came the sound that has taken 
every mother throughout the ages into the very den 
of the enemy, the cry of her young in pain. She held 
up her hand in token of submission. 

She could stand torture for herself, but none for her 
baby. Memory made its anguished cry sound again in 
her ears. For that, just as the canny elder knew, when 
he had frightened the child, she would have gone down 
from heaven and entered the very gates of hell. 



She did not faint or falter until she had snatched it 
from the old demon's arms and soothed and quieted it. 
Then had come a moment of blessed forgetting. They 

43 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

waited, those brave men, until she "came to" and prom- 
ished all they asked. Women usually promised — of 
course, there were a few — but the desert tells no tales. 
All this had been long ago, and yet, by the magic of 
memory, it was to-night. She gasped in pain, and, 
putting her scarred, stained hands up to her throat, 
loosened her collar. She caught her breath in quick, 
painful jerks. The rope ! The rope was there. There 
where the moonlight shone on a pallid scar. She shiv- 
ered with the memory of that icy water, she tasted the 
brine in her mouth, and the tears smarted in her eyes. 
She rose up and stretched out her arms to the night- 
sky. 

The fire of a long-smoldering resentment flamed up 
and scorched her well-disciplined soul. 

She went into the house and shook the Swedish girl 
into wakefulness. 

She sat up, blinking stupidly. "Hilda," the old 
woman asked, "have you got on your garment?" 

The girl nodded, bewildered. 

"Do you know what it means?" 

"Yes," the girl whispered, her big eyes dilated with 
fear. "Ven you talk vat you know, or you break those 
vows you get killed so, on your heart." 

The woman nodded. "Good Mormons must wear 
them, but not you, Hilda." 

"Sometimes, vat it mean if you tak them off?" the 
girl asked, in a whisper. 

"Sometimes this," the woman said, laying bare her 
throat. The girl gasped with horror. "You ban hong," 
she breathed. 

"Listen," the woman said, holding her arm tight. 
"Take off that garment, do as I say," as the girl hesi- 

44 



THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

tated, frightened out of her wits. "Slip on your shoes 
and come with me." 



They half-ran down the steep little path to the 
river and both knelt on the bank, and Hilda, shaking 
with fear, obeyed the gesture of the woman's hand and 
threw the sacred garment out into the rushing current 
of the moon-silvered river. They watched its swift 
sailing on the breast of the tide with superstitious awe, 
then climbed the rugged path back to the house. 

The woman knelt down by the sleeping children and 
wakened the boy. 

"Willie," she said, "look here." 

"I seen that before," he said, as his eyes followed 
her fingers to the scar. 

"Willie, I hate your father !" 

"Un-hun," Willie acquiesced, sleepily. Then to 
change an unpleasant subject, said: "Maw, I want a 
nickel to-morrow. I gotta get a tablet." 

Willie threatened to lapse again into insensibility, 
but his mother shook him. 

"Listen," she said again. Willie and the strange 
girl from Sweden listened, wondering and afraid. 

"I hate your father ; I've hated him for forty years, 
forty years," she repeated. "He is an old man and 
I am an old woman, but I have hated him every day 
and every hour since that time when he helped them to 
do this." 

She put her hand up to her throat, and the boy 
sobbed breathlessly. 

"He never supported me, never, although he is a 
rich man. 

45 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"I've worked all my life with these hands." She 
held them out in witness. 

"I have starved and cared for fourteen children. 
You are almost raised now. Before many years I can 
rest, rest." Her voice dropped and lingered over the 
word. "Through all these years I have worn the 
garment, I have paid my tithing, I have gone humbly 
before all men. I have never been housed, or clothed, 
or fed as a decent woman should be. I have thought 
that I could endure to the end, but to-night I am 
through." 

She loosened her gown, and they heard the tearing 
of a cotton fabric. 

"Listen," her voice had sunk to a whisper. "In the 
morning I am going to Salt Lake to see your father. 
When I come back we four will get on the cars and 
go away." 

"Maw," the boy caught at her hand, "what are you 
going to do?" he sobbed. 

"I am going to your father. I am going to lock him 
in his room, and hold this" — she laughed huskily and 
walked over to the bureau, and took from a drawer 
a little box; this she opened and they saw something 
gleam like silver in the moonlight — "this revolver to 
his head until he draws a check of five thousand dollars 
to me. If he won't — but he will," she answered her 
own doubt. 

She caressed the shining thing before she put it back 
into the box. 



She didn't put the box back into the drawer again, 
but dropped it into an old shopping-bag. 

46 



THE GARMENT OF SALVATION. 

The boy whimpered and the little girl stirred rest- 
lessly in her sleep. The woman lit a lamp. When she 
spoke again, her voice sounded so assured and natural 
that the tense lines of terror in the Swedish girl's face 
relaxed, and the boy lay back with a sigh of relief. 

"You will stay with the children, Hilda, you needn't 
go to school, Willie." 

Willie nodded in drowsy relief. 

"I'll take the early train over and will try to be back 
by two o'clock. Don't be afraid." She put her hands 
on the girl's for an instant. 

"There is law now, thank God, oh, thank God ! We 
are going, mark me, we are going." 

:j« % ^c %. :fc # jjj 

The morning papers in Salt Lake City chronicled the 
sudden death the day before of one of its early pion- 
eers, a bishop in the church. 

The death had been unexpected, although the doctor 
had warned them of the danger of a sudden shock. But 
as far as his family knew, he had received none. 

A check for five thousand dollars had been made 
out by him and dated the very day of his death. The 
check was made out to and cashed by one of the la- 
mented's first wives, who, the papers stated, had left 
Ogden the evening before. 



47 



V. 
THE ISLES THAT WAIT. 



Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their 
window? Surely the isles shall wait for me. — Isaiah lx. 9. 



Bishop Jones had led a long life, and stood as an ex- 
ample to the youth of Zion. He had raised some fifty- 
odd saplings in the vineyard of the Lord, and had 
builded him an enormous business, from the employees 
of which was weekly gathered a goodly sum in tithing 
for the — but just what, no man rightly knows, though 
there are some so gross as to say, for the enrichment 
of the leaders in this cause of righteousness. 

The bishop interpreted the scriptural command as 
to the trimming of his lamp, that it might be bright and 
burning on the day of His coming, to mean that he 
must take unto himself as many wives as he could get, 
and sedulously fulfil the commandment to increase and 
multiply, by bringing all the olive branches possible 
into the world, from which to wave the proud banner 
of his name. 

If by chance any one confronted the bishop with 
certain laws made by the land which sheltered him, or 
even mentioned a certain passage in Christ's sermon on 
the mount, he would turn to his much-bethumbed book 
of the Doctrine and Covenants, and, finding the one 
hundred and thirty-second section, would point a long 

48 



THE ISLES THAT WAIT. 

forefinger to certain unmistakable language given 
therein : "And if any man espouse a virgin and desire 
to espouse another, and the first give her consent ; and 
he espouse another and they are vowed to no other 
man, then he is justified, for he cannot commit adultery 
with that which belongeth to him and no one else. And 
if he have ten virgins given unto him by the law, he 
cannot commit adultery, for they are given unto him, 
therefore he is justified. But if any one or either of 
the ten virgins after she is espoused, shall be with an- 
other man, she has committed adultery, for they are 
given to him to multiply and replenish the earth, ac- 
cording to the commandment given to my father before 
the foundation of the world." 



It is probable that such a commandment was given 
before the foundation of this world, for, since we are 
given to understand that He who founded it put there- 
on people with some ideas of decency (witness the fig- 
leaf), we know that if He had waited until after this 
to give such a licentious, self-debasing command, they 
wouldn't have stood for it. Secondly, if we were to 
subscribe to that revelation, we must admit that the 
Savior of humanity was mistaken, for we have heard 
it said that He said that "Whosoever looketh on a 
woman to lust after her hath committed adultery al- 
ready in his heart." (Christ's sermon on the mount.) 

Is there, then, another, truer teaching than Christ's? 
The bishop would so have us believe. 

Then, too, if we follow the bishop, it is no sin, but 
rather a virtue for the male portion of creation to com- 
mit adultery, but it is a sin unpardonable for that part 

49 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

which was made from his rib to so much as flutter an 
eyelash in any direction than that of her sectional hus- 
band. We, who know our Doctrine and Covenants, 
know well the fate that threatened Sarah if she ob- 
jected to her husband increasing his marital business. 
But even so, there are women, it is written with hesi- 
tation, right in Zion who are not willing to be, or happy 
after being, polygamous helpmates. That they are not 
fully content with the practise of the divine revelation 
showed quite clearly in the conversation held one after- 
noon in Sister Jones' kitchen by a number of sisters 
of the faith. Sister Jones was one of the first of the 
bishop's several wives. As sometimes happens in a 
Mormon family it had fallen to one of the wives to 
care for the children of several. Some of the wives 
may die, and some be compelled to work in order to 
support themselves and children. Such a lot had been 
Sister Jones'. 

A good Mormon woman should desire nothing be- 
yond the plainest necessities: it is not good for them, 
and tends to distract the mind from the privilege of 
holiness. It is much safer to entrust a man with 
what he wants: he can keep his eye on the reward of 
the spirit while he caters to the lusts of the flesh — 
but a woman ! That is different. It is safe to assume 
that if she has a full stomach she will want a new 
dress ; if she gets a new dress she will want a new hat, 
so that she can go out to show it; if she has the hat, 
the chances are nine out of ten that she will "set up" 
for shoes, and there you are! A woman and small 
children have much need to learn "The Word of 
Wisdom," which means that you must not have what 
you want. 

50 



THE ISLES THAT WAIT. 

This Sister Jones was, generally speaking, a good 
soul, but she had moments of recklessness ; she had to- 
day when Sister Johnston and Sister Slocum and two 
of the teachers all happened to come in. It was a 
rainy day, and they tracked in considerable mud on her 
freshly scrubbed floor. Dolly, a child of one of the 
younger wives, who was out working, had the mumps, 
and sat by the fire with her grotesquely swollen little 
face swathed about with spicy-smelling flannel cloths. 

It was Easter week, and Sister Johnston, who was 
an English woman, and who, even in Zion, cherished 
some of the traditions of her country, had brought 
over a pan # of her hot cross buns. The little girl held 
one of them in her hand, but had refrained, after the 
first painful bite, from eating it. Her flushed little 
face was sullen with discontent. Sister Johnston looked 
discontented, too — the buns made her homesick for her 
happier life in the Fatherland. Sister Jones' face wore 
the same expression. She was ironing; she spat on 
the iron, to test its temperature, with some fierceness. 
"Often and often I wonder what it's all for," she said. 

Sister Johnston seemed to know what she meant. 
"So do h'L Life ain't worth nothing to me." 

"I was at meetin' last night," Sister Slocum said ; 
"an elder was sayin' that we won't have to look to this 
world, but get our joy in the next; 'tain't but a few 
more years now till Christ comes to reward the faith- 
ful," she sighed."* 

"Well, eternity's all right, I suppose," Sister Jones 
said grudgingly, "but I can't make out, if they are 
so sure Christ is coming so soon, why they keep on 

*The Mormons teach that Christ is coming in 1914. 
51 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

building churches, and fine Houses, and bringing chil- 
dren into the world. That ain't no fitting way to get 
ready for Him, seems to me." 

One of the teachers, feeling the heresy in this re- 
mark, hastened to interpose before Sister Johnston (al- 
ways a dissenter) sided in. "Sister Jones," she said, 
"the commandment is to keep your lamp trimmed and 
burning." 

Sister Jones glanced at the child and said bitterly: 
"Well, He will find plenty of candles burning, if that's 
what you mean. 'Pears to me that if the men filled 
some other part of the Scripture as faithful as they do 
the 'Be fruitful' part, it would be a better world." 

This time Sister Johnston did side in. "So do h'l," 
she said sententiously. "Bishop was around to see me 
again yesterday, about going through the temple. He 
thinks h'l ought to get sealed to John. I don't see 
why ; we was married tight and fast enough in h'Eng- 
land. But he said we ought to be sealed for eternity. 
'H'indeed h'l don't,' h'l says to him, 'h'l get too much 
of 'im 'ere. HT want some rest if h'l get to 'eaven !' " 

"Still," the teacher objected, "a woman can't get to 
heaven unless she is led by a man, and you won't have 
a man to lead you if you ain't sealed to one." 

"Huh !" sniffed Sister Johnston, "seems like a woman 
'as got to 'ave 'ell on this world, in h'order to escape 
it h'in the next." 

"It does so," agreed Sister Jones. She glanced at 
the pan of buns, at the big basket of unironed clothes, 
back at the buns, hesitated, and was lost. "Let's have 
a cup of tea," she said venturesomely, "and eat Sister 
Johnston's buns." 

52 



- „ 


,, 






i 






mm J» 




•■b 



THE ISLES THAT WAIT. 

" 'Ave you black tea ?" quavered Sister Johnston 
hopefully. 

"Make Mormon tea," admonished the teacher. "It's 
against the word of wisdom to use tea or coffee except 
in case of sickness." 

"I'm sick," the child said. 

"We are all sick," Sister Jones added. "Heart and 
soul sick. If I want a brewin' of black tea, I'm going 
to have it; wisdom or no." 

"Well," the teacher admitted yieldingly, "we are 
mortal damp." 



So Sister Jones made her unchristian cup of tea, and 
set aside her ironing, and the four women gathered 
around the table and drank it, and ate Sister John- 
ston's buns. Sister Jones became quite garrulous over 
her second cup, and the intoxicating experience of sit- 
ting down in the daytime. The faces of Sisters John- 
ston and Slocum, and of one of the teachers reflected 
sympathy, and of the other teacher, to whom a 
new idea was as unwelcome to her mind as was a draft 
to the back of her neck, disapproval with Sister Jones' 
daring remarks : "Bearin' the souls of men, as the 
Cov'nant says, ain't all a woman wants in this world," 
Sister Jones said. "I bore thirteen myself, and raised 
as many more, but do you think that has satisfied all 
my longings? It ain't. When I was a girl, back in 
Missoury, I used to read novels — wa'n't no harm in 
them," in response to the teacher's look, "and I always 
dreamed of the way them book folks lived. Maybe it's 
wicked, but I always kept it in mind ; their lives seemed 
so — so full, some way. My ! how I would like to hear 

53 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

folks like them talk, the way they do in books, where 
they just break off in the sentence and finish in French 
or some forrin' tongue. Tears to me that if God should 
judge agin' them, they could just smile any way, and 
say, 'I've had my heaven here.' " 

The teacher breathed a chesty sigh. " 'Tain't ours 
to judge, sister," she said. She glanced toward the 
child, now half-asleep in her chair. "Dally ought not 
to hear such talk," she said. 

Sister Jones poured some more hot water over the 
tea-grounds. "Do you suppose it would hurt Dally 
any more than what she heard her paw say the other 
morning?" she asked, her tired old eyes flashing with 
indignation. "I don't know as I have a call to be 
shielding him," she said, as in answer to an inner 
thought. "He ain't smoothed my path none. Sister 
Libbie, Daily's maw, has just been put to it to raise 
money to pay Willie's doctor bill. Yes, he's some 
better, but the poor boy is pretty miserable yet. Dally 
here was just barefoot and had to have shoes before she 
could start into school Monday. I says to her maw 
that I'd go see her paw and see if he wouldn't get her 
shoes (it's almost lucky she has the mumps now, it 
gives me an excuse to send the teacher). It's been 
years since I've asked for so much as that." She 
snapped her toil-blunted fingers. "Well, come Mon- 
day, I took her and went up to his office. I wanted to 
get the money and get her shoes before school called. 
She had to wear a pair of her maw's, and she hung 
back, pouting, for fear some of her mates should 
see her and call shame to her. Her poor little feet 
were rattling like peas in a pod, the shoes was so 
loose on her, and I didn't blame her much. I was 

54 



THE ISLES THAT WAIT. 

plumb took back when I went into his office. He always 
tells us that he is so poor that he can scarce make out ; 
but, shucks ! There was carpet on the floor, and he was 
sitting at a handsome desk in one of them turnin'- 
chairs. He didn't look poor. I went up to him and 
said, shortlike, that I had come for money to get the 
child some shoes. He looked at me, smiling, and asked 
'Why?' 'Because you brought her into the world,' 
I said, and he answered me with these words. Dally 
heard him, poor little thing: 'If I bought shoes for 
every brat I have brought into the world,' he says, 'I'd 
be a poor man.' " 

******* 

Little Dally roused up and began to cry. "My ears 
ache," she sobbed. The old lady took her up in her 
arms. "That's just what that man said, wasn't it, 
auntie?" she whimpered. 

"That man ! Why, land sakes, child, 'e's your paw !" 
Sister Johnston exclaimed, scandalized. 

"She scarce senses it," Sister Jones said. "She 
ain't seen him but a few times ; he ain't no more a 
paw to her, the way I sense the relationship, than that 
there man across the street. He used to notice some of 
the first children, but now he don't know these here 
ones by sight. There, there, Dally, stop crying. I 
know they ache, but that hot flannel'll ease them. Oh, 
it's the shoes you're crying about? Well, shut up, 
then ; didn't I tell you I'd get you some as soon as I 
finish this ironing, and Miss Silver pays me?" 

"Of course," the teacher conceded, "Bishop ought 
not to have spoke so. But I suppose he is pestered 
awful. He can't be expected to put out money on all 
his children, even President Smith don't do that." 

55 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"That's what I say ain't right," Sister Jones said, 
clearing away the tea things and getting her ironing- 
board out. "A man ought to provide for what he 
brings in the world." 

"That's what I think, too," Sister Slocum said. "And 
if I have to get to heaven by hangin' on to some of 
these old Mormons' hands, I'd about as soon not go." 

The teachers looked at each other, and the younger 
shook her head. Three dissenters in one afternoon! 
But there was no need in argument; they saw that. 
When they rose to go, however, the elder one; gripped 
her duty in both hands, and asked them urgently to 
come to meeting. 

Sister Jones shook her head as she smoothed a 
garment over the ironing-board. "I might drag my 
legs to the meetin'-house," she said, "but after what 
the bishop said yesterday I couldn't whip my soul into 
submission. If I'm lost, I'm lost. But after all these 
years, after seeing my children scattered about by the 
winds of adversity, and me at sixty taking in washing 
for a living, and him to speak to me like that — no, I 
can't go to meeting. I will pray to Him here. All I 
want now is some place to rest ; maybe I'll find some 
little spot among all them mansions. But I'll wait 
here." 



56 



VI. 

A FIRST WIFE. 

Ruth Simms had lived all of her life in the shadow of 
the temple. She knew its every curve and angle, and 
as familiar as her own father, was the form of the 
Angel Moroni who stands in gilded splendor on the 
eastern tower of that remarkable building, built as was 
Solomon's temple of old, without sound of hammer, 
but reverently, brick on brick, into a mighty monument 
of faith. 

Ruth believed that within those walls one learned 
the mystery of God and the purpose of life; she 
thrilled with awe at the prospect of entering its sacred 
walls, to be sealed for time and eternity to Wilson 
Herrick, and to look at last upon the truth revealed. 

Not every couple in Zion are deemed worthy, by 
those in authority, to be sealed in this holy of holies; 
some are married by the bishops in the ward meeting- 
houses, for time, and must prove their fitness by a 
sedulous obedience to the laws of the church, before 
they can enter the temple. For not even under the 
very thumb of the Presidency is every spiritual lamp 
kept properly trimmed, for even as did the serpent 
enter into the garden, so now, in the very shadow of 
the temple entereth worldliness, worldliness, my chil- 
dren, so that not all are fitted to "walk with him in 
white garments." 

57 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Ruth was worthy; both, by reason of the standing 
of her family in the church, and her own earnest work 
in the Sabbath school and the "Mutual," was she 
both called and chosen for the temple rites, and as 
for Elder Her rick — was he not just returned from a 
fruitful mission in Australia where his beguiling eye 
and plausible tongue had fully persuaded a number 
of souls, tottering on the very brink of apostasy, to 
seek the green fields of Zion and there await the com- 
ing of the King? Elder Herrick had done well, he had 
returned with a goodly number of the saved souls of 
the enemy as did the warriors of old with their scalps, 
into the camps of his fathers ; he had brought with him 
converts who had filled his people with pleasure, for 
even as there is more rejoicing in heaven over the one 
lost sheep than over the ninety and nine that stayed 
about the fold, so is there in Zion over the one convert 
with money than over the ninety and nine who count 
their small change, and the elder had brought with 
him two families of wealth to give a tenth of their sub- 
stance to the cause of Righteousness, so verily was he 
worthy when the day dawned that he and his bride 
were to make ready for the anointing in the name of 
the Spirit. 

Ruth entered the temple in thrilled exaltation, and 
walked through the first rooms of the endowment with 
a feeling as though she was approaching the very gate 
of glory, but some of the service worried her, and 
some of the promises she made, gave her a vague pain 
of foreboding, and in that chamber where the rended 
veil shows a skeleton of horror instead of an angel 
of light, she fainted — brides often do — and was sealed 
by proxy — brides often are. 

58 



A FIRST WIFE. 

For the ceremony, as to the time it takes to be per- 
formed, gives a foretaste of the eternity for which it 
it preparing, and as there are no refreshment stands 
in the temple, the spirit does not always support the 
body of the devotee all the way through, but they al- 
ways see enough to remember — and usually to obey. 

Ruth loved her husband with all the ardor of her 
nature, and in those first days when they spent their 
honeymoon at the Great Salt Lake, set like a jewel 
in the hills, and reflecting the intense, cloudless blue 
of Utah's summer skies, to the lovely Lagoon, where 
a fresh-water lake snuggles close under the shadow of 
the mountain, through the grand canons of the Wasatch 
and back to their own little adobe home on the shore 
of the Jordan River, she thought that she had sensed 
in the silences of God's outdoor temples the mystery 
and the meaning of life which she had failed to grasp 
in the mighty tabernacle made with hands. She made 
of her home a shrine. She was a housewifely, domes- 
tic little woman, and each article of furniture that came 
into the house filled her with a joyous sense of pos- 
session. She loved to move them about ; to drape back 
her crisp new curtains in new ways, and to cut won- 
derful, intricate, scalloped edges in paper to decorate 
her cupboard shelves, and on which she arranged and 
rearranged her adored rosebud china and her little 
blue tea set. It gave her a sense of fulfilment to make 
a batch of bread "turn out" right, and a joy bordering 
on ecstasy to have her husband praise a meal or the 
shining order of her house. Later came the greater 
joy of fashioning tiny garments for the coming of a 
little child, and when he came! Ah! but Ruth was a 
happy woman. 

59 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

She went to the mothers' meeting with a quivering 
joy at her right to be there, and marveled at the 
world-weary, saddened faces of some of the older 
women, and, against her will, came memories of old 
tales thronging up over the threshold of her conscious 
happiness ; tales of the early days in Zion, when sor- 
row and women walked hand in hand. Her own 
mother had been a fifth wife, and, looking back, she 
could not remember to have seen her smile. But youth 
takes the sorrows of age for granted. Ruth believed 
in the Doctrine and Covenant. She believed that the 
revelation, regarding the plurality of wives, to have 
come from God ; and a commandment was a command- 
ment — she knew that. She loved her father and had 
an affection for all his wives. She believed that the 
president of the church was right to cleave unto the 
five wives the Lord had given him, and to contend that 
the law of God (as given to His seer and prophet) 
was better to hold fast to than the law made by men 
unguided by any light other than that which shone 
about a political platform. She believed in the church 
law rather than the land's law — but still — she fell in 
step with old Sister Clausen when they came out of 
meeting and asked breathlessly : "Have you ever been 
happy, Sister Clausen?" 

Sister Clausen raised her whitish-brown cotton um- 
brella as a shield against the too persistent spring sun- 
shine and looked out from under its shadow at her 
questioner with a ruminating light in her faded eyes. 

"I d'know as 'twas meant fur us to be what you 
call happy," she said slowly. 

"But were you," the girl persisted, "when you were 
young?" 

60 



A FIRST WIFE. 

"That was a good time ago," the old lady hedged, 
then added a trifle impatiently : "Cain't you be content 
if you be happy yourself without worrin' about oth- 
ers ?" 

Ruth sighed, "I got to thinking about polygamy in 
meeting," she said ; "I was wondering how you stood 
it, if you loved your husband as I love Wilse." 

The old lady was silent until she reached and turned 
into her own gate ; she spoke then as she fumbled with 
the latch. "We loved our husbands," she said, "and 

we stood it, some of us did. But " she hesitated, 

then added so low that the girl just caught the words, 
"it was to our hearts like black frost would be to them 
flowers," pointing to a bed of scarlet tulips, "it with- 
ered them." She put down her umbrella and started 
up the path, then turned and leaned over the fence 
to whisper to the girl, "I hope Brother Wilson won't 
be called to take no more." 

"Oh! He won't — he can't," Ruth gasped, almost 
running in her haste to get away. 

She caught her baby up in her arms the moment 
she reached home and looked deep in his vague, wide- 
open eyes. She held him to her so passionately that 
he cried out and she smothered his little face with 
kisses. He was the visible bond between her husband 
and herself. She could stand — she thought with a sob, 
to have him love another woman — if — if God meant 
that — but not — not to see or to know that he could fon- 
dle another's child on his knee. She carried the baby out 
on the porch, around which the vines were beginning 
to show green, and looked through their tender foliage 
to the hills, flushed in the glory of the sunset, and 
to her fear-awakened soul it seemed as though the red 

61 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

glow was as from the stain of the blood of the women 
martyred by a cruel, perverted law, and her soul sick- 
ened with memories of the past and a new apprehen- 
sion of the future. She saw her husband turn down 
the street, but her feet felt weighted so that she could 
not go to meet him. He came bounding up the steps 
and caught the baby in his arms. 

The baby screamed with delight and buried his tiny 
fists in his hair. "Make him let go, Ruthie," he said 
laughingly, "and protect me from his onslaughts until 
I can get in the house." 

Ruth loosened the baby's hands, kissing each little 
pink palm in a passion of love. "You won't ever love 
another one like you do this?" she asked, forcing his 
careless glance to her white face. 

"Why — why I reckon I'd love 'em all the same," 
he said. "I suppose the little shavers bring the love 
with them." 

"Would you," Ruth caught at his hand as he turned 
to enter the house, "love him just the same if — if some 
other woman was — was his mother?" 

"Reckon so, if he was as cute as this fellow," he said, 
holding out his hands to the baby, but his mother held 
him close. "The worst of it is," she half-whispered, 
"is the children." 

"Huh !" he said carelessly, then added, "Seems to 
me it's feeding-time ; where's supper ?" 

"I haven't it cooked yet, Wilse," Ruth faltered, "I 
— I went to mothers' meeting" — he smiled approval — 
"and I don't know why, but I got to thinking about 
Sister Clausen and Grandma Todd and a lot of the 
women, and wondering that they all looked so, so — 
well, sort of through with things, and then I got to 

62 



A FIRST WIFE. 

thinking about polygamy — I never thought of it so be- 
fore — but — but it seems so cruel " she hesitated, 

and laid one cheek against the baby's soft, feathery 
hair. 

A frown darkened her husband's face. 

"You could better have been thinking of your soul's 
salvation," he said in his mission voice, "than pre- 
suming to criticize (as I see you were) one of the 
blessed commandments of the Father." 

"But — Wilson, you don't believe in it — now ?" 

"The will of the Father is the same, yesterday, to- 
day, and forever," he said sententiously. 

"Oh, Wilson," Ruth cried piteously, "you — you 
couldn't marry again, say you couldn't !" 

"Not unless it is the will of the Father. Look here, 
Ruth, do you believe in the testimony of the golden 
plates of Nephi?" 

"Yes " 

"You believe — know, that Joseph Smith was a 
prophet of Almighty God ?" 

"Yes." 

"You know that the Mormons are His chosen peo- 
ple — we are the church who restored the scriptures to 
a sinful world, and carry the torch to light the way to 
salvation." 

"Yes," Ruth said uncertainly. She was not think- 
ing of what he said at all, but of how blue his eyes 
were and how pretty his hair waved off of his still 
boyish forehead, and wondering if one of those girls, 
those rich convert girls from Australia, who had come 
all of the long journey in his company, had noticed 
them, too, and if — if 

"Then," concluded her husband, a touch of impa- 

63 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

tience in his voice, "you must accept His law on all 
matters. If polygamy was His divine command, and 
was ever right, it is right now. No puerile law can 
alter that." 

"But do you believe it is right?" 

"I know it !" A light of religious fanaticism kindled 
in his eye. "All of our great leaders have been po- 
lygamists — do you think they were wrong, when they 
were allowed to talk face to face with our Lord?" 

But Ruth was sobbing helplessly, wiping her eyes 
on a bit of the baby's ruffled petticoat. 

"You act," her husband said sternly, "as though I 
had married again." 

"But I am so afraid you will," the girl sobbed. 

"Not unless God so ordains." 

"But He always ordains just what the men want," 
she cried. 

"Ruth," his tone was new to her, "put the baby 
down and get supper, I must go to the councilors' 
meeting." 

Ruth put the baby in his carriage and tried to smile 
in his wondering little face with her trembling lips, 
then went into her little pantry, with all its bravery 
of scalloped paper, and rosebud china, and shining 
tinware. She took down the little teapot and looked at 
it with streaming eyes. It was a symbol. "He — he 
believes in it," she choked ; "he can conceive of other 
wives and babies — and — and — homes !" She put the 
little pot back on its paper doily on the shelf, and went 
about preparing supper, but the shrine was desecrated, 
it was as a temple without a god, a hearth without a 
fire, a body wherein the spirit of hope had gone and 
the monster of fear had entered. She knew what had 

6 4 



A FIRST WIFE. 

given that look to the faces of the older women of 
Zion, she remembered what she had promised and why 
she had fainted in the temple. 

As soon as her husband had started for the meet- 
ing, she pinned a blanket under the baby's dimpled 
chin, and started across the prairie to Grandma Dut- 
ton's — Grandma knew. 

It was the night of the young people's "Mutual," and 
she met scores of them on their way to the meeting- 
house. A group of girls stopped her and wanted to 
look at the baby. She turned him around and made 
a mouthing coo so that he would smile at them. 

"Looks just like the Herricks," one of them said. 
"Wilse's children are going to be like old man Her- 
rick's — every one of his children looked just like him. 
Sister Sarah used to say that it put her to it to tell 
her young ones from Sister Jane's and Sister Lydy's. 
They was all out-and-out Herricks." 

Ruth put the baby over her shoulder. "He favors 
me," she said shortly. 

"Well, you won't have no trouble to pick him out 
from the rest, then," the girl laughed, and Ruth won- 
dered that she never knew before how intensely she 
hated her. 

It was a warm, sultry evening, and the clouds over 
the lake foreboded rain. The air was sweet with the 
odor of growing things, and the damp, earthy smell 
of the ground, not long released from its last covering 
of snow. Birds twittered in the box-elder trees over 
her head, she looked up in the branches and whispered 
huskily: "They only choose one mate, and raise one 
brood, and build one nest." 

Grandma came out to the gate, screening her eyes 

65 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

from the last rays of the setting sun. "Baby sick, 
Ruth ?" she called. "He cries like he mout be." 

Ruth looked at the baby with dazed eyes. "I didn't 
know he was crying," she said. "He must be hungry ; 
I — I forgot to feed him." 

The old lady took him, and gave him a professional 
poke here and there. " 'Tain't him," she said, "it's 
you; what's happened?" 

Ruth moistened her dry lips. "Wilse believes in 
polygamy," she whispered, as though all was said. 

" 'Course he does," Grandma said succinctly, "ain't 
he a dirty man?" 

"Oh, Grandma," the girl protested, "Wilse is awful 
good." 

"Well, maybe so," the old lady agreed, without con- 
viction. "Has he took another wife?" 

"No — but oh, Grandma, I am so afraid he will," 
Ruth sobbed. 

The old lady made a clucking little sound, a mixture 
of relief and disgust. 

"Time enough to cry when he does," she said. 
"Here, sit you down and nurse the baby, pore little 
dear; he has et half this cracker a'ready, he is so 
starved. I'll make you some tea, and then you and me 
will talk." 

The girl took the baby, and the very act of minister- 
ing to his need calmed her. 

"You have always lived in polygamy?" she asked 
needlessly, for every one knew that Grandma was one 
of a half-dozen wives. 

"Mout's well say hell," she snapped, "but if polyg- 
amy is a politer word fer it — I hev." 

"Do you think God commanded it ?" 
66 



A FIRST WIFE. 

"Command fiddlesticks/' she said irreverently. 

"But the men in the old testament " Ruth fal- 
tered over the words, "they had lots of wives, and " 

"Drunk blood out'n each other's skulls, an' et their 
extra children ; but that ain't so sayin' as we should — ss 
— I kin see," the old lady said testily. "Solomon had a 
right smart number, I disremember how many, but I 
know Brigham Young died before he near caught 
up." 

"Are you a doubter?" Ruth asked wonderingly. 

"Not of the goodness of God, honey, but of some 
of His servants. I think some of them git the name 
of their employer mixed. Wa'n't no way out when I 
was young, but for you " 

"There has got to be a way," Ruth interrupted 
eagerly. "I can't let Wilse marry again. I don't be- 
lieve God ever meant that he should. I'd hate Him if 
I did. Why, He made us, too. All creation ain't for 
men's choosing. We have rights, too. But I can't 
make Wilse see. And — and, I am so afraid that he 
is going to have a revelation about one of those Aus- 
tralian girls." 

'What makes you think so?" Grandma asked, rin- 
sing out her teapot preparatory to making a fresh 
cup. 

"I don't just know. It kind of came to me ; hints I 
have heard and let pass, and to-day in mothers' meet- 
ing, it came over me in a flash, and when Wilse came 
home I couldn't get any satisfaction out of him — 
he just threw up God's will to me." 

Both were silent. Into Grandma's withered brown 
cheeks crept a dim flush ; she twisted her lean old hands 
in her lap, and set her toothless gums in a hard, 

6 7 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

straight line. The hands on the dial of her life turned 
back until they reached its morning. She had been a 
first wife — and she knew. 

"Waal," she said finally, "if it's God's will (which it 
ain't) fer men to live with as many fool women as they 
kin git, then it must be His will fer women to do the 
same ; we come from the same source — so 'at the same 
law must work." 

"Oh, Grandma !" Into the girl's eyes crept a look 
of shrinking horror. 

"I reckon Wilse would sing a different tune if he 
thought you was playin' the same game." 

"Grandma !" 

"You hush," the old lady lisped, sternly. "Do you 
want Wilse should marry again?" 

"No! Oh, no!" 

"Well, then leave it to me. You go out to Sister 
Sidory's ranch first thing in the mornin'. Don't tell 
Wilse where you are goin', but if he finds out where 
you be, and phones out, say that you are hevin' a fine 
time, 'cause that handsome young feller you went out 
with when he was away on his mission, is stayin' out 
there, an' " 

"Oh, I can't!" 

"Let him go ahead, then." 

"No — no !" the cry was anguished. 

"Then listen. You be sound asleep when he comes 
to-night, an' soon as he leaves in the mornin' take all 
your best things an' go out to your Aunt Sidory's. 
Keep fixed up an' smiling every minit, an' if he comes, 
or phones, be as bright as a cricket an' say as how you 
air willin' as he should take another wife " 

"Grandma!" 

68 



A FIRST WIFE. 

"Because you are in the notion of livin' with an- 
other man " 

"There ain't any other man. I never loved any one 
but Wilse." 

"Humph! I d'know as a man is so much that a 
woman cain't make one up fer a special occasion." 

"But maybe Wilse won't come," Ruth said, although 
a daring light was beginning to shine in her usually 
mild brown eyes. 

"He'll come," Grandma affirmed, "I ain't lived nigh 
on to eighty years 'out knowin' his sect." 

Wilson apprehended a scene when he reached home, 
and was relieved to find his wife sleeping peacefully. 
She seemed quite as usual the next morning, too. If 
her cheeks were unusually pink and her eyes brighter 
than their wont, he did not notice it ; he only thought, 
as he kissed her good-by, how pretty she was. He 
was sorry that she had felt so bad the night before; 
he decided to take her some candy or a bunch of flow- 
ers at noon. 

He thought of her often during the forenoon, and 
hurried somewhat on his way home to dinner. It was 
Friday, the day Ruth always baked bread. He smiled 
as he anticipated how she would have all of the fat 
brown loaves spread out for him to admire. He ex- 
pected to see the baby on the porch, in his carriage, it 
was so warm ; but no — he must be asleep in the house. 
He opened the door softly and stepped from the little 
front room into the bedroom, and, seeing no one there, 
hid foolishly behind the kitchen door, to jump out and 
surprise them — they must be in the kitchen. But there 
was no sound ; he peered out, cautiously, but saw noth- 

69 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

ing save the empty room, aggressively silent. Ruth's 
blue apron hung on a peg near the cupboard door, and 
her sunbonnet was on its accustomed nail under the 
clock shelf — she couldn't be in the garden. He called 
to her, but his voice seemed to awaken echoes all over 
the house, as though it were calling with him, or 
mocking — "Ruth, Ruth." Then the silence, falling 
again, hurt him like a blow. He went into the bedroom 
and began mechanically opening the drawers. He no- 
ticed that her hat was gone; the hat she had worn 
when they were first married. She wouldn't get a new 
one this spring, she said she wanted to put the money 
in the carriage for the baby ; he remembered her smile 
as she said that every one would be so busy .admiring 
the baby that they wouldn't notice her hat. He shut 
the drawer and went out in the kitchen again. He 
walked around the room, looking ai each familiar ob- 
ject: this was where she always sat to tend the baby; 
there were the marks his carriage made on the floor; 
there hung the dish-towels, the one for the white and 
the one for the colored dishes, as Ruth called the pots 
and pans. Over the paper woodbox hung a tiny gar- 
ment of the baby's, and on the floor lay a little rubber 
toy. He picked it up, and it squeaked horribly. He 
started and called again ; then, his voice awaking only 
the echoes, he buried his face in the folds of the blue 
apron. Wilson had his revelation. 

He put on his hat and hurried over to Grandma's. 
She might be there. She wasn't, but Grandma knew 
where she might be. Grandma knew so much. She 
told him about that lovely young man, who, she 
guessed, was out to Aunt Sidory's now, picture-making 
or some such fancy work. She knew that he was awful 

70 



A FIRST WIFE. 

taken with Ruth — wanted to make picters after her, 
as she recollected; Ruth might have made a mistake 
throwing him over; but then, she didn't know. Men 
seemed to have authority from Almighty to take 
more'n one wife, seemed about time that women was 
getting a revelation that it was all right to live with 
more than one man. Sort of seemed strange for a 
woman to be contented with a dozenth part of a man 
when the man — but Wilson had gone. 

******* 

He got to Aunt Sidory's at dusk. He had almost 
run over the dry, cacti-covered prairie to the ranch. 
He had but one thought, to see Ruth and the baby. 
Grandma was right. He hurried as he thought of the 
picture man, He saw Ruth on the porch ; she looked 
cool and pretty ; she had on a light dress, and something 
red — a flower — in her light hair. She saw him and 
smiled, and he caught her in his arms. 

Ah ! Grandma knew ! For he promised all that she 
had a right to ask, and for Ruth "the desert blossomed 
as the rose." 



7i 



VII. 
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

It stood far up in the deep, shadowy canon of the 
Wasatch Mountains. It was built of logs, rough-hewn 
and massive. Its furniture was of the crudest, but 
there was here and there a pathetic touch of attempted 
decoration, which showed that a woman had dwelt 
therein. On the ledge of the one barred window 
stood a cracked cup holding a bunch of white, ethereal- 
looking flowers that grew up close to the snow-line. 
It was very silent. The woman who stood, straining 
against the barred doorway, felt an oppression as if the 
two sides of the canon were closing up, shutting out 
the light and air. 

Presently she cried out, half in relief from the awful 
loneliness, and half in instinctive terror of what the 
approaching footsteps might foretell. 

A man, dressed in the picturesque garb of the fron- 
tiersman of forty years ago, advanced slowly along the 
faintly marked trail, and stopped with an amazed 
whistle when he saw the woman standing in the door- 
way of the cabin. 

"What — who on earth !" he exclaimed. 

"A woman in hell I" The voice of the woman, de- 
spite the rough tragedy of her words, had in it a cer- 
tain appealing sweetness. The man drew near and 
asked in a low voice: "What they got you shut up 
for?" 

72 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

"Because I kept running, away. Yesterday I got 
out and climbed clear up there," pointing back over 
her shoulder to the white-crowned peak. "I thought 
I could get down on the other side, but they caught 
me, and then they put these on." She touched the 
heavy limbs that were nailed, barwise across the door. 

"What you done — gone off here?" he tapped his 
forehead. 

"No ; I am what you men call a stubborn female. I 
have been trying to run away from Zion ever since 
I found that the man I married had three other wives, 
and that we was all nothing but the same as nigger 
wenches — to slave for nothing. I got pretty near away 
twice, and I guess they thought I'd get help from the 
Gentiles, because the last time they brought me here. 
I suppose you are one of the dogs they have sent to 
see if I'm safe?" 

"Me ! Do I look like one of them oily, sanctimoni- 
ous, long-whiskered religious fakirs ? Think I hang my 
hopes of glory on to their darned old gas balloon of 
Mormonism — do I look it?" 

His indignation seemed so genuine and his eyes so 
honest, that, much as the woman had reason to suspect 
treachery, she believed him. 

"But how," she asked, "do you come to be here ?" 
"Happen-stance, pure and simple. I drive the stage. 
The present road over the mountain is as steep and 
slippery as the road out of the warm pond the Saints 
tell us about. My pard is holdin' on to the seat, tryin' 
to keep the hosses from sittin' back in his lap to-day, 
while I'm prospectin' these here canons to see if there 
is a way through. Understand ?" 

73 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"Yes. Are you really a Gentile?" 

"Sure pop. I'm one of them men that the 'Doctrine 
and Cov'n't' mentions." He laughed a loud guffaw 
that reechoed down the canon. "Do you mind the reve- 
lation young Joe got from Almighty? It goes like 
this: '* * * an' the trump of God shall blow 
loud and long and shall say to the sleeping nations: 
ye saints arise an' live; ye sinners stay an' sleep until 
I come again/ (18 verse, 43 section Doctrine and 
Covenant.) If they was all as gol-blamed sleepy-head- 
ed as I be, bet half of 'em rather stretch and turn over 
an' go back to sleep. I swan, I'd choose the sinner's 
half of the agreement." 

"How do you know the Covenant if you are a Gen- 
tile?" the woman asked, with reawakened suspicion. 

"For my own edification. Besides, it's healthier for 
me to pretend to the bloomin' saints that I'm open 
to conviction. When your biz takes you in the prophet's 
dooryard like mine does, it's policy to act like you may 
go into the fold, see?" 

"You wouldn't " The woman's eyes were so 

wistful that the man was stung with sudden tears, and 
he looked studiously at the copper toe of his heavy 
riding-boot as she continued: "Help a woman to es- 
cape ?" 

"Would if I dast," he said, after an embarrassed 
silence. "I ain't posin' for a coward. I'll fight Injuns 
with the next one, an' I reckon I know by the feel 
which end of a gun to take holt of; but your saints 
ain't no little thing for a man to buck up agin' — I'd 
rather face a bloomin' torpedo-boat than one of them 
Christian outfits if they're wrathful. Do you know 
what they did to one man with a Sir Walter Raleigh 

74 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

disposition, who was assistin' one of their discontented 
females to escape? Hear about him? No; well, 
they staked him down out on the desert — sun gets 
sorter warmish out there, you know. Well, they 
put food an' water where he could see 'em, but 
just out of his reach, an' left him. He was 
found before the buzzards (you mind your little 
buzzard story in the marriage endowment cere- 
mony) got holt of him, but, pshaw ! he was so locoed 
that he wa'n't fit for nothin' but the monkey-house. 
And the woman " 

"What did they do to the woman?" Her face was 
so white as she whispered the question that he said 
hastily : "Oh, nothin', I reckon, but make her promise 
to mind. I have heerd back East about people wantin' 
the whole hog ; trouble with you Mormon women seems 
to be that you want the whole man. Why ain't you 
satisfied with your share?" 

The woman looked at him, and he felt the red blood 
rise in»his rough-tanned cheeks at her look. "Ain't 
that, I know," he amended hastily. "Darned if I could, 
I'd help you. Got anything to eat ?" 

"Stale bread and water." 

"Huh ! They could show the devil hisself some new 
stunts in the disciplin' line." He half-turned away, 
and the woman held out her hands in terror. 

"Oh! stay — don't — don't leave me," she implored. 
"Just what you have said, just hearing your voice, has 
helped me — here," she touched her forehead. "You 
know, I thought I was going mad." 

"Small wonder if you did," the man muttered. He 
turned back with reluctance, for, as he said, he well 

75 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

knew the issue of any misdirected gallantry in a case 
like the present. 

She read his thought. "I know you are afraid, and 

I don't blame you, but " the anguish in her tone 

touched him. 

"I'll knock off some of the trimmin's on your door, 
so as you can get out," he offered. 

She shook her head, and said, in shamed confusion : 
"I — I can't — it wouldn't help me, because — because 

" she sobbed, "they took away my clothes. ,This 

is just a bedquilt I wrapped around me." 

"The devils!" the man muttered. He chewed the 
ends of his long mustache. "When are they comin' 
back?" he asked. 

"I don't know. Soon, I suppose; they will watch 
me pretty close since I got away yesterday." 

The man considered. "I can think better on a full 
stomach," he said. "I'll fix my snack." He moved a 
few steps away. 

"Don't go !" the woman shrieked. 

"I won't. I'm goin' to find twigs enough to het up 
some coffee. You an' me will drink it, an' then we'll 
light on some plan for your getaway." 

A light came into the woman's face, and her strained 
expression settled into softer lines. He noticed for the 
first time that she was pretty. 

"Pore little heifer," he said softly. He knelt down 
where she could see him, and, holding his broad hat 
before the little heap of twigs, lighted them. 

"I'll give you the water," the woman called. She 
was afraid to trust him out of her sight while he went 
to a near-by creek. He heard the soft patter of her 
bare feet on the floor ; she came back to the door with 

7 6 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. 

a small pail of water, which she poured with some 
difficulty through the cracks between the bars, into the 
can he held up. She talked to him while he waited 
for the water to boil. 

"I get so awful scared and lonesome I about give up 
to go back," she said, "but when I see them I hate them 
so that I know I'd stand the fire of the stake sooner 
than go back and live with him. All his wives hate 
him ; he is so mean. Mary died last week ; she took 
poison. We knew. Maybe we'd all 'a' took some, too, 
if there had been any left. But her death was horrible 
— horrible !" She covered her eyes with her hands; 
then, remembering the lack of convention in her cos- 
tume, took them down, and, blushing deeply, wrapped 
the quilt more closely around her. 



The man handed her a tin cup of strong coffee, and 
a great slice of bread and meat, and sat down near 
the door to eat his own "snack." 

With the warmth of the coffee, and the stimulus of 
the food, which, despite her famished condition, she ate 
with a certain daintiness, her spirits rose, as did the 
man's courage. Twice during their strange repast she 
laughed at some of his quaint tricks of expression. 

"I wish that quilt wasn't so gol-blamed decollatay," 
he said, "so you could skin out with me now. But as 
it won't answer for a real bang-up travelin' costume, 
I'll have to light out now an' scare up some female 
apparel." 

Her eyes widened again with terror. 

"Don't you go to gettin' scairt," he said reassur- 
ingly. "I'll get you out of this weasel trap to-night." 

77 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"Oh, do, do!" the woman begged. "Listen," she 
lowered her voice to a whisper. "He — he said that 
here, in this room," looking shudderingly over her 
shoulder toward a dim corner, piled full of rubbish, 
"over there is the skeleton of a woman who ran away, 
and he said they kept her here to warn — warn women 
like me." The man peered through the bar. 

"It's a dirty lie," he said, the while his face whitened 
at — was it ? It might have been a trick of the shadows, 
but it looked like something that might once have been 
a woman's hand. 

"I'll get you out of this hell-trap," he promised. He 
took her trembling little hands and pressed them kind- 
ly, then strode off down the canon. 

Left alone, the woman pressed close against the bars 
in the doorway. She believed the man would come 
back, yet — if he should not, if even then some of her 
enemies were coming and should see him, and suspect 
his purpose. She was sure afraid. For the first time 
since her incarceration, she glanced over in the dark- 
ened corner. It seemed to her that she saw what the 
man had thought he had seen. 

"Oh, in Christ's name !" she gasped, "can such things 
be? Yet they are done in His name and under the 
cloak of religion. Religion! Oh, the sin and the 
shame of it!" She sank to her knees and lifted her 
voice in prayer. The words echoed up the walls of the 
canon, and perchance, who can tell ? may have reached 
even above the white tops of the mountains, on through 
the blue into the light beyond. 

"God," she prayed, "if Thou wilt help me to escape, 
if Thou wilt let me out of this," she shook the bars of 
her prison, "and let me reach safety in a Christian land, 

78 



THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE, 

I will never, never rest from doing all I can to bring 
justice to the outraged women of this wicked, wicked 
system. Amen !" 
She kept her word. 



She watched the afternoon shadows lengthen, lis- 
tened to the twilight calls of the birds, strained her 
eyes for a sight and her ears for a sound of some one 
approaching. Hope and fear struggled together as 
darkness stole down the canon. 

At last, when it seemed she could no longer endure 
the waiting, she heard hurried footsteps, and the man 
who was her promised rescuer came running up to 
the door. 

"They are after me," he panted, "the " A few 

forceful blows broke down a couple of the bars. "Don't 
wait for anything. I've got some fixin's for you in 
the stage. My pard is waitin' with it down the canon. 
Oh, damn!" he exclaimed, "you are barefoot. But you 
can't stop — I hear them now ! Skin ! Run on ahead ! 
Straight down the canon." 

The woman needed no second bidding. She ran like 
a startled deer. The man followed, his spurs clattering 
as he ran. He had his revolver cocked in his hand. 

The saints, several of them, were racing after them 
down the hillside. Some of the language they called 
after them did not sound as though it had been selected 
for, and recommended to, them in a revelation. They 
ordered them to stop in the name of all Authority, and 
under penalty of some of the most blood-curdling 
threats. As soon as they were close enough they be- 
gan to fire. A bullet tore its way through a corner of 

79 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the quilt, which was flapping around the woman as she 
ran. One stung like a hornet in the man's shoulder, 
but he didn't pause, not even to discharge his own 
weapon, until, panting and breathless, they reached the 
stage. He hid the woman in the "boot," sprang to the 
seat, and whipped up the horses. This moment's pause 
gave their pursuers time to come almost abreast of the 
stage. The man turned in his seat and emptied his 
revolver at the group. He got a number of bullets 
through his hat, which he now keeps carefully put away 
in an old leather baggage boot that had once carried 
precious freight across the desert. 

Sometimes he will take it out and tell its story. He 
will explain that the stiffness in his shoulder is not due 
to rheumatism, and he will finish his story, after he 
has lit his pipe and leaned back in his wide, easy chair, 
by saying: "It was a close shave, but," as he peers 
out into the kitchen, where a white-haired old lady 
moves cheerfully about, "I'll be gol-blamed if it wasn't 
worth it!" 



80 



VIII. 
WHEN CELIA RANG THE BELL. 

Celia Lennox was a pretty, wistful-eyed girl, senti- 
mentally religious by nature. When, as a child, she 
had watched the sun sinking in a bed of purple and 
gold, and caught the glory of its reflection on the 
mountain peaks, she had fancied that it foretold the 
opening of the gates of heaven, and the reflection was 
like unto that which would transform the faces of the 
faithful who dared to meet the King. Celia thought 
that she longed for that day more than any other, and 
would fairly burst her slender throat singing, "I am 
waiting, only waiting, for the blessed day to dawn," 
and thought that she meant it until she got acquainted 
with Ross Cranford. After that she knew that this 
world was good enough for her, so long as it held him. 

It has been said of old that the course of true love 
never yet ran smooth, and when that love is between 
a Gentile youth and a Mormon maid many and treach- 
erous are the rapids, and deep and unexpected the sink- 
holes. 

This was before the reign of any law other than the 
church was more than a fevered dream of the night. 
The religious zeal of Celia and her father and mother, 
and her five "aunties" was so well known, that her 
clandestine intimacy with the young hound of a Gentile 
had been going on for some time before the sleuth of 

81 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN, 

the ward, the bishop, found it out and reported it to 
her father, who, aside from dividing the solace of his 
presence among six exacting, hard-working wives, was 
the bishop's first counselor. 



The father was astounded, and admitted, when 
brought up standing before the very image of his 
guilt, that he had been remiss in not disposing of his 
daughter Celia in marriage before. It was quite true 
that Celia was past sixteen, and might already have 
added at least a branch to the spreading tree whose 
shade was to shut out the sun of reason and of truth, 
and whose poisoned roots were to sap the strength 
from the growth of religious freedom and take away 
the shelter of the country's law. 

But Celia had been a good girl at home; when her 
mother was not there she had ministered to his wants. 
She could make delicious milk biscuits, and get a meal 
in such short order as to please her father. Then, 
too, she kept the younger children washed, and darned, 
and polite. In fact, the family which had Celia was 
clearly his favorite, and more because of the cheerful 
efficiency of the daughter than of any superior attrac- 
tions of the mother. Twice had he frowned on two 
would-be suitors from the sheep of the fold, only to 
find that his favorite daughter was "going on" with a 
goat. True, and true it is, that many of the saints 
were sore afflicted by the unwelcome invasion of the 
Gentiles into their sanctified land. 

Something must be done, and at once. While his 
counselor had been talking of the virtues of his comely 
daughter, the mouth of the bishop had been fairly 

82 



WHEN CELIA RANG THE BELL. 

watering. He had a revelation right then and there 
that God desired him to take another wife, and decided 
that that wife better be Celia. 



Now in those days a Mormon took another wife as 
easily and with as little expenditure of energy as an 
ordinary man would use in changing from his winter 
to his summer underwear. In the latter case, he looks 
meditatively at the sky, reads the weather forecast, con- 
sults the calendar, and it's done ; in the former he has 
a revelation from Almighty, selects the woman, and 
marries her, willy-nilly. Before erasing our figures 
from the slate, we will use it further to show that while 
it may turn cold and frost this June, whereas it was 
warm and pleasant last June, so may this revelation 
prove troublous in fulfilling, whereas the last several 
wives were led as meekly to the temple as are the lambs 
to the slaughter. 

Celia, devout and tractable as a Christian, efficient 
and cheerful as a housekeeper, well-favored and per- 
fectly modeled as a woman, was still stubborn and 
hateful past belief in view of this revelation of the 
bishop's. While believing absolutely in the testimony 
of the golden plates of Nephi, and doubting not that 
the sainted Joe talked as intimately, with as little re- 
serve of fact as you would use in talking to the tax 
collector, she doubted that the bishop's revelation had 
come from the Lord. She was almost blasphemous in 
her language. She said that the bishop had more wives 
now than was allowed by the Covenant, and that she 
would die sooner than be sealed to him ; besides, she 
said, he was as old as the hills and as ugly as time, and 

83 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

she hated him. While she knew much better than to 
say so, even as she would storm at the bishop, her eyes 
would soften and she would cuddle the hand that had 
lain in the boy's rough palm against her soft, pink 
cheek, and say in her heart that she loved another even 
as she hated the bishop, and because her heart taught 
her she knew that no such evil thing could come from 
a pure God, and she defied them with as little fear as 
success. For she was married to the bishop. 



This is a chapter in the life of Celia which was hard 
to live and is hard to write about. The night before 
the bishop had had his revelation she had gone to bed 
with the sweet, innocent dreams of a child ; a fortnight 
later she was a woman, from whom the shield of youth 
had been ruthlessly torn and whose ideals had been 
broken and thrown at her feet. She was like the bud 
of a flower whose protecting leaves had been forced 
open by rude hands that cruel eyes might look into its 
guarded heart. Oh ! life was hard for Celia, as for 
many another fair girl whose spirit was broken on the 
wheel of that atrocious dogmatism. So white and wan 
did she look the day after the ceremony in the temple 
that her father sought the groom with a troubled brow. 
"Give her a little leeway, bishop," he said. "She is 
young and headstrong. Be patient." 

But the bishop shook his head. "I've tried both 
ways," he said, "and I find it saves bother to show 
your authority first out. The sooner a woman learns 
that her whims are useless, the sooner she quits having 
them. Your girl is pouting over that young Gentile 
whelp, and if she don't stop he'll leave Zion." 

8 4 



WHEN CELIA RANG THE BELL. 

And with this the father had to acquiesce, albeit that 
the blood pump in his body, which in another man 
would have been a heart, felt somewhat heavy when 
he bade the girl good-by. 



To outward seeming Celia was soon subdued, but 
even "as a hart panteth after the water brooks," so did 
this child yearn for the sound of the boy's eager voice, 
the touch of his strong young hand, and the glance 
of his honest blue eyes. As for the lad, the sun of 
his life had gone down when the girl was married to 
the bishop. He decided, as boys of twenty sometimes 
will, to spend what remained of his white young life 
sacred to the memory of the girl he loved. He went 
often to the canon and brooded over the places they 
had been together. One day, sitting with his boyish 
head bowed on a flat white rock that Celia had once 
called her center-table, he was roused by a touch on 
his shoulder, slight and hesitant, as if a bird had lit 
thereon. Looking up he saw Celia. Near as she was 
to him physically, so great a change had the last few 
weeks made in her that spiritually she seemed farther 
from him than she had ever been before. He looked 
at her in bewilderment ; then, noting the hollows in her 
cheeks, and the dark rings under her eyes, a wave of 
pity for her surged over him, and he held out his 
hand to her and asked : "Is he mean to you, Celie?" 

"He says he is good to me,'' she answered, with a 
hard little laugh. "He hasn't hit me yet, and he does 
Bertha." 

"Hit you?" the boy gasped. "Oh, Celie, I— I can't 
stand that. I can't. Listen to me. I have got pa to 

85 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

buy that piece of land next the bishop ; we will move 
out next week, and then I'll keep watch of the house, 
and if he should be — be mean to you" — he stopped and 
knit his brows in thought, then added presently — "I'll 
get a bell and hide it under your well-curb to-night; 
you get it in the morning and keep it by you ; you can 
stuff something in the clapper and carry it in your 
pocket; then if you need me, ring it, and I'll come. 
Promise." 

The girl promised, but without hope. "You couldn't 
help me," she said tearfully. 

"Yes, I could. Keep your promise, and I'll hear 
the bell." 

The girl promised again, and the next morning she 
pressed a little bell to her lips, but she didn't ring it, 
although — but we said before that some things are hard 
to write. 

The Gentiles moved on to the land, but were directly 
served with a notice, headed by the sixth and seventh 
verses from the fourteenth chapter of the Book of 
Revelation, and written underneath a clumsily worded 
order to vacate the property by the command of and 
at the price offered by the church, or beware the wrath 
of the "Avenging Angel." Now, the avenging angel is 
so apt to take on earthly form and ammunition in ar- 
gument that it is much better, if you get a notice of this 
sort, to yield at once, else you see it avenged. So in 
those days it was best to give the "angel" whatever 
some avaricious old Mormon wanted, first as last. But 
these Gentiles refused to do this, and sent to Washing- 
ton for authority to keep what they had bought. That 
was at the time that scandal was beginning to come 

86 



WHEN CELIA RANG THE BELL. 

thick and fast in Zion, and the saints withdrew their 
"claim" to the property, having found that there is 
more than one way. 

The Gentiles did not move, neither did they prosper. 
The family would have been glad to have gone had 
Ross, who was their main support, allowed them to do 
so. He would not leave Utah, or, as years went on, the 
place, except in cases of real necessity. He stayed al- 
ways near enough so that he could hear the tinkle of 
a bell. His parents died, and his brothers and sisters 
married and moved away, but he still stayed on. On 
the other side of the high board fence was a woman, 
pale and sad-eyed, who might one day need him, and 
he waited for her summons. 

As years passed, Progress found her way over the 
mountains and across the desert, and in her wake came 
a gleam of hope for the women of Zion. Of course, 
there were many of those who did not know that she 
had come — among these was Celia — but the bishop 
knew, and the knowledge that what they had most 
feared was about to come upon them, and the new fear 
of the law, made him more hard and cruel to his wives 
and children. 

******* 

It clearly behooved every daughter of Zion to put 
forth every effort to increase the Mormon population, 
and the bishop, after an impassioned speech in meeting, 
in which he urged that every mother's daughter over 
the age of fourteen be given at once into wedlock,* 
was reminded forcibly that he had a daughter of his 

*Actual utterance by a bishop in Salt Lake Tabernacle 
last November. 

87 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

own, by his wife Celia, who was past that age and still 
single. Celia's daughter looked much as her mother 
had done at her age, and, much as her father had done 
on the former occasion, another noble old man offered 
to take her to wife. The bishop went with him to 
Celia's home, and arbitrarily ordered his daughter to 
make ready to marry him. The girl, trembling with 
fear, ran to her mother. "Oh, mama," she sobbed. 
"Don't let them take me. I — I hate him." 

Celia looked at the bishop. "Are you going to insist 
on this ?" she asked very quietly. The bishop nodded 
emphatically. Then, suddenly, they were startled by 
the loud ringing of a bell, which Celia held aloft in 
her hand. No one knew where she had gotten it or 
why she was ringing it, and before they had time to 
ask, or before its last vibration had died away, the 
door burst open and a man stood before them. He had 
lived next door to them for years, but the bishop did 
not know him. He was near-sighted and half-fright- 
ened out of his wits, and he thought that it was the 
law at last, and, fast as his shaking old legs would carry 
him he ran, followed by the would-be bridegroom, out 
of the house, out of the yard, on and on, and was not 
seen for many a day. They hid — but if you wonder 
where or how, ask some one who knows what is under- 
neath the temple at Logan. 



88 



IX. 

THE SINS OF THE FATHER. 



I, the Lord, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the 
iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and 
fourth generations of them that hate Me. — Exod. v. 20. 

Therefore, cease from all your light speeches; from all 
your laughter; from all your lustful desires; from all your 
pride and lightmindedness ; from all your wicked doings. — 
Sec. 28, verse 121, Doctrine and Covenants. 

But I have commanded you to bring up your children in 
light and truth. — Sec. 93, verse 40, Doctrine and Covenants. 

Now, behold, the nobleman, the lord of the vineyard, called 
upon his servants and said unto them : "Why ! what is the 
cause of this great evil?" — Sec. 121, verse 52, Doctrine and 
Covenants. 



Dearly beloved, we are together to talk of a grave 
subject ; we are going to talk about the coming genera- 
tion of citizens in the State of Utah. We are going 
to consider the children who go to our schools, who 
are on our streets, the children whom we see in our 
public parks, the children whom we hear in our juve- 
nile courts ; and we are going to ask what are the con- 
ditions of these children's lives, where they were born, 
and in what environment have they lived that they 
should bring the red blush of shame to our faces. 
What of these children? 

A zealous, long-whiskered elder called at our house 
one day with a book called "The Defense of the Faith." 

89 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

We asked him why the faith needed defending, and he 
answered, "Because of the prevailing prejudice against 
polygamy." 

"Does that need defending?" we asked. He consid- 
ered, and aimed, with the accuracy of long practise, at 
the cuspidor before he replied : "Well — er — the funda- 
mental argument in favor of polygamy is that it brings 
purer children into the world." 

"And are the children of these plural wives more 
pure?" we asked, in a tell-me-more-about-God-Uncle- 
Tom voice. 

To the credit of humanity and the book agent, the 
elder shifted his ground, and, instead of replying, 
brought forth another argument. "Well, you see," he 
began, "in the early days when we were led by the 
Spirit across the desert, and after many hardships and 
dangers reached the garden, we were threatened with 
massacre by the Indians." 

"Wasn't there a massacre at Mountain Meadows?" 
we asked, still in our little-Eva voice. But again the 
good man disregarded the rising inflection in our tone, 
and continued: "As I was saying, there were so 
many Indians and so few saints that it was so — er — 
difficult to induce immigrants to come here " 

"Was the — er — experience at Mountain Meadows 
calculated to induce them to undertake the perils of the 
trip for a like reception?" we asked, as one seeking 
light. 

"It was so hard to get people enough together for 
self-defense," the elder went on, and we discovered 
that he was quite deaf in his Mountain Meadows ear. 
"It was necessary for us to propagate ourselves for 
our own protection against the Indians." 

90 



THE SINS OF THE FATHER. 

"You mean," we asked, "that you brought the chil- 
dren into the world to protect you from the Indians ?" 

"That was one reason," he answered. 

We figured mentally. It takes three-fourths of a 
year before a child is ready to claim its soul. We 
usually allow it a year in which to cut its front teeth 
and take its first wabbly, little steps ; sometimes we 
have to allow even a month or two more to do this. 
Then it takes a little more time for it to clothe its 
thoughts with speech, and even after we substitute a 
string of spools for the rattlebox it takes some time 
for the muscles to harden sufficiently for a real effective 
use of the hatchet. It even takes some muscle to cock 
a gun. So figure as we would we could see that even 
with the most forward it would not be possible for 
the children to protect their parents under several 
years. Then suppose they should all have the measles 
at once ! It certainly looked bad for the saints. 

"But," we voiced our deductions, "weren't you afraid 
that the Indians would get tired resting on their toma- 
hawks and come in and whet them on some of the 
elders before the children would be old enough to de- 
fend them ?" 

But even here the elder did not quite clear up the 
cloud of our ignorance by the sun of his wisdom. He 
only said that we could only trust in God and intimated 
that there was still a warmer place than Utah for those 
who had flaunted at religion. We felt bad because we 
had not flaunted; we had only inquired. Maybe it is 
logical to propagate for your own protection, but what 
of the children ? 

******* 
91 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

We are going to tell you a little story. Perhaps we 
didn't "make it up" ; we don't believe it is original, we 
think it was told us long, long ago; it may be you 
have heard it or dreamed it some day when you have 
perchance been alone in the foothills or by the river 
or in the forest where you have heard the song of 
some golden-throated bird singing to his mate. 
Maybe you remembered it some morning when you 
lifted up your eyes to the hills or above them to where 
the heavens declare the glory of God. Maybe it came 
to you in a strain of music, but we believe that you 
have heard it or dreamed it, the story of a man and 
a woman ; the story of the foundation of a home ; the 
story of little children being born with a heritage of 
honor, being taught the principle of right living, the 
sacredness of truth, and the sanctity of moral law. In 
that story we have heard or dreamed of mutual honor 
and respect. We know of a book that teaches children 
to honor their father and mother ; we know of a book 
that tells parents to provoke not their children to wrath. 
And we are going to inquire how we can follow these 
two teachings either if we are polygamous parents or 
children, or if we can follow them and believe in that 
little story. 

Suppose your father was the father of the children 
of five other wives, would you honor him? Suppose 
your mother was the mistress of five other men, would 
you honor her ? Suppose your father had, say, twenty, 
or thirty, or forty other children to claim the protection 
of his parenthood, wouldn't it provoke you to wrath? 
What of these children ? Do you think it makes purer 
children to defy the very first principles of right liv- 
ing? Does it make a child purer to send him out on 

92 



THE SINS OF THE FATHER. 

the streets to sell papers as soon as he can fairly walk, 
because his father has so many wives and the wives 
have so many children that there is not bread for him 
to eat unless he helps earn it ? Does it make him purer 
to be taught that he must not tell the truth about some 
things, and, in case he is asked, he must lie about his 
parents? Does that make him pure? Does it make 
him pure to go to meeting and hear one thing taught, 
and go home and see another thing practised? Does 
it make him pure to hear the jealousies, the back-bi- 
tings, and the rivalries between his mother and the 
other wives of his father ; between his mother's children 
and theirs? You ask me if there are these jealousies, 
and I ask you if these wives are not women ? You ask 
me if there is this deceit, and I ask you what the presi- 
dent of the church told the government and what he 
told his own people when he returned home ? You ask 
me if they teach one thing and practise another, and I 
ask you to hear their sermons and investigate their 
lives. What of these children? 



Do you know that in Salt Lake City there are houses 
with secret rooms, with sealed doors in the walls, with 
trap-doors in the floors, which, when you open them, 
reveal a flight of steps which descend to an underground 
apartment? I can give you the street and number of 
such houses. Why were they built and what of the 
children that are born in such houses? Do you know 
what language some of these children use on the public 
school grounds ? Have you ever thought of the future 
of the boys and girls who at twelve and eleven, even 
at seven and six, have a repertoire of foul language, of 

93 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

obscene, perverted knowledge, who lie as the sparks fly 
upward? What of these children and of their State 
and their country? Whose fault is it, and for whose 
sins are they suffering? 

We asked one sad-eyed, stoop-shouldered old Mor- 
mon woman, who, after having borne a dozen chil- 
dren, was earning her bread by washing, what she 
thought of polygamy. She wiped the suds off her 
hands and the sweat out of her eyes before she re- 
plied slowly, as though weighing every word : "Well, 
I suppose it has to be. You see, there are seven women 
in the world to where there is one man, and, you see, 
heaven ain't open to a woman if she is barren, so, of 
course, God meant every woman to have children, be- 
cause so many women would be lost if the men didn't 
live with more than one." 

"Do you think that is true ?" we asked. 

"Why, ain't it?" she asked, as astonished as though 
we had told her the stars had fallen. 

"No," we said, "it's a lie." 

"But" — she plaited her apron and knitted her brow 
in bewilderment — "it must be true because science 
says so, and — and God said so, too." 

"Who told you so ?" we demanded. 

"Bishop," she replied. And so long as bishop can 
make them believe his interpretation of science and of 
God so long will he have a halter around the necks of 
the women of his ward. As for the men — the bishop's 
teaching takes away the curb of decency and makes a 
virtue of licentiousness. 



94 



THE SINS OF THE FATHER. 

A woman in our ward fell ill last winter, and it came 
to the ears of her neighbors that she and her children 
were without food or fuel. We took some of our 
Saturday baking and went over to see her. She was 
in bed in a room destitute of comfort or order. Four 
little children, the eldest a boy of eight, and the young- 
est a baby of two years of age, were huddled around 
a rusted stove in which smoked and smoldered a 
meager fire of damp sticks, which was the only anti- 
dote to the chill of the desolate adobe shack. The 
children were ragged and dirty past belief, and, judg- 
ing from the avidity with which they devoured the 
food we set on the table, were half-starved. There was 
an older girl, a hollow-eyed, tubercular child of four- 
teen, who was out working for a living until she had 
fallen ill several weeks before. We asked her where 
the children's father was, and she told us that he had 
gone on a mission. She went on to say that she and 
her brother were to send him $5 a month. The brother 
had been out of work all winter, and, what with the 
tithing and sending the money to her husband, and 
the slow pay and small washings of some of her cus- 
tomers, she had not been able to save any money. Some 
women are so shockingly extravagant! 

She made a pretense of religious fervor, and said, 
with a sanctimonious whine, that Christ was sufficient 
for her. We looked at the children, all of whom, in- 
cluding the baby, were "pawing" into the lemon pie 
which one of the neighbors had contributed. We took 
note of their hungry, chalky faces, their crafty, shift- 
ing eyes, and cried out in the bitterness of our hearts : 
"He is not sufficient to feed and clothe your children." 



95 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"Oh, well," she said easily, "they'll soon be out from 
under foot." What of them then? 



Is there anywhere under the vault of heaven more 
need of missionaries than in the State of Utah? Are 
there any vines in the vineyard of the Lord more filled 
with poisoned branches than are on this prolific tree 
of Mormonism? Who needs the teaching of Christ 
more than the children of this alleged religion? Who 
needs saving if not the children whose pre-natal in- 
fluence was of oppression, licentiousness, and perverted 
law? The black sins of the fathers of polygamy are 
being visited upon the children, upon the State, and 
upon the country, verily unto the third and fourth gen- 
eration. Confronted with this problem, we can only 
bow our heads and say humbly : "Lead, kindly light," 
away from the "cause of this great evil." Let us pray 
for the children of Utah. 



96 



X. 

THE HORNET'S NEST. 



Moreover the Lord thy God will send the hornet among 
them, until they that are left and hide themselves from thee, 
be destroyed. — Deut. xx. 7. 



I have not written any little idyls of Mormon life 
and love for two weeks, and I'll tell you why : I have 
been horribly frightened; I actually thought that I 
would get the death endowment, and that the only way 
in which I could communicate with the Mormons would 
be the unsatisfactory one of tipping the table or "rap- 
ping" on some elder's bald spot. I have had grave 
reason to doubt that I would be allowed in the garden 
until the last day, and it looked like I might go as chaff 
at any time, and all because of these same little idyls. 
In fact, one good Christian lady did intimate that, had 
I so presumed to meddle with the holy of holies a few 
years ago — well, I wouldn't of dast, that's all. I came 
up against a regular head-on collision; it seems that 
every last thing I had told was like unto a shoe, which 
pinched some sainted foot, and that it was all laid up 
agin' me. I have waited as long as I dared for a reve- 
lation in the matter, but as nothing has revelated so 
far, I have decided to act on my own accord and make 
such retractions and amends as seem to be necessary. 

Speaking of revelations, you know how the bishop 
does over at Huntsville? Well, he waits and keeps 

97 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the town waiting until he gets a revelation from Al- 
mighty to see if it is right to mend the hole in the 
sidewalk before it breaks any more legs, or whether 
they had better put the money it would take into im- 
proving the meeting-house. As nearly as one can 
judge, the town is always on the qui vive for a revela- 
tion as to what it should do, and, in the meantime, 
trims its nails, and whittles, and kills time as best it 
can, until the bishop throws some light on the divine 
will as to what they should busy themselves at. Some 
people seem to think that this is detrimental to the 
town, but it seems to me that if these people really 
believed that these revelations were due from the Al- 
mighty Power, really, truly, that they would not laugh 
or fret at their delay. I doubt that they do, just as I 
doubt that they believe that Christ is coming in a few 
short years. If it should be true, and if the stone one 
of the saints stumbled over in the center of the earth 
does mean the fulfilment of a prophecy, and that the 
days before the day of judgment are numbered, are 
the saints all ready for a short-notice ascension? I 
am afraid that some of them are figuring on Christ 
wearing blinders when He does come, but I promised to 
retract, didn't I? 

I can't say that any of the statements made in my 
offending article are not true ; they are all from actual, 
every-day "garden of Eden" life, and as I made solemn 
covenant with the editor to do, I have verified every 
statement before publishing it as a fact, but since by 
so writing I have lacerated the feelings of a number of 
good people, I will gladly make what changes I can ; 
turn out the green and put on the rose lights, so to 
speak, 

98 



THE HORNETS NEST. 

I felt, in the beginning, that since the church pub- 
licly denounced polygamy and discountenanced its prac- 
tise — since the manifesto (which, by the way, seems 
to be a movable feast) that as an organization it would 
be grateful to me for sort of hunting up these people 
and calling attention to the fact that its president was 
betraying their trust. You see, I thought that maybe 
they were so busy collecting the tithing and one thing 
and another that they would be glad to have me do it, 
but they don't seem to be: they all seem to want to 
leave the black covering over that little issue undis- 
turbed. Besides, whose business is it, anyway? I 
should have been more modest, too, than to have al- 
luded to some things, because by so doing I have 
shocked some of the older saints who are not accus- 
tomed to living with more than a dozen wives at once, 
and think it isn't nice to speak of some subjects. St. 
Paul said something about women keeping silent, and 
the idea sorter clings to some of these latter-day 
prophets. 

Since coming to Utah I have met some splendid peo- 
ple who are Mormons. I am proud to count some of 
these as my friends ; among them are sincere, earnest, 
Christian men and women, who to know is to respect 
and love. These articles are not in any way concerned 
with these people, who should, if they cared to 
investigate the truth, which they could almost read as 
they run, about some of the earthly practises of the 
divine (so-called) law. cooperate with me in bringing 
to the light those things of which they cannot but dis- 
approve. 

Now, about some of those promised retractions : The 
elder did not wear his beard for a shirt-front, or grow 

99 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

it to use as a cuspidor ; he wears it for an ornament, 
but since, like the poor, it is always with him, and a 
cuspidor isn't (while the need for one is), well, the 
beard is more in the nature of a catch-all — so I will 
take that back. 

About that woman who took poison: I cannot re- 
tract the statement that she took it, because she did, 
but it may be that she liked poison, and took it for 
that reason, instead of the one inferred — because her 
husband had a faculty of bringing home other wives, 
now and again. 

Then, too, I was severely called down for mention- 
ing that godless old Gentile who had his ears cut off 
by the saints. I can't say that he didn't have his ears 
trimmed, because, you see, they show it so plain; but, 
then, it may be that he didn't really need ears, any- 
way. 

Again, I offended the woman whose husband was on 
a mission to Australia. She said her children never 
pawed no pie, and so I must correct that. They might 
not have been so hungry, it might have been curiosity 
to see what a pie would look like. Now that she is 
well and able to wash again, and make money, she says 
that Christ ain't sufficient for all her needs. Anyway, 
she is mad at me, and sent back all my jelly glasses, 
as much as to say that it is all off between us. 

That story about Sylvia and grandma. Now, the 
girl's name isn't Sylvia at all, but she did come from 
Australia, and, bless your heart, if every one didn't 
seem to know about it before I told them ! And they 
say that I hadn't ought to have put it in print ; it isn't 
a nice story, not good reading for young girls. I own 

ioo 



THE HORNETS NEST. 

right up that it is not, but if only one girl read it and 
was made a little more wise thereby, then I am glad 
it was told, and printed. I can't retract any of that, 
excepting that the bishop provided for her — he did, a 
little while — but she is now working for her own and 
her little child's board and $8 a month. 

But nothing, in all that I have written, seems to have 
offended so many people and to have fitted so many 
feet as the little tale called the "Sins of the Father.' , 
I got that name from the Bible, too. Sad as it makes 
me feel to say so, I can't amend any statement made 
therein. I have tried it from different viewpoints, and 
studied the matter under different lights, but I cannot 
make any difference in the blackness of the situation. 
I cannot see it in any light but sinful, wicked, abhor- 
rent. 

I had occasion to hire a boy of sixteen a few days 
ago to assist me. I was interested to learn what he 
thought of the youth in Utah. This boy, who seemed 
a nice lad, is the son of a fifth wife; he has younger 
brothers and sisters, and his father has a younger wife 
than his mother. They must both have been very 
young for matrimony before the manifesto, I judge. I 
asked this boy what he thought of polygamy. 

"I don't know," he said. 

"Does the church know it is being practised now?" 
I asked. 

He hesitated. "Well, they let on they don't; but 
they don't say nothing against it to the people who 
do live that way." 

"But what do you think of it?" I asked again. 

"I don't know much else," he said ; then added fierce- 
ly : "I think it is awful. I aim to get out of this place 

IOI 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

this fall. I am going to the coast, and when I get 
started I am going to send for my mother. She has 
to work awful hard here." 

"Don't your father provide for her ?" 

"I should say not. He ain't done nothing for us 
since he was married the last time. It keeps him hump- 
ing to provide for his last wife and her kids." 

I have no words that will express the bitterness in 
that boy's tone. He went on : "I can't get ahead none 
here. I work all the time, but I am taxed for some- 
thing all the time ; this week it is $3 for repairs on the 
meeting-house, and every week it's tithing. I never 
see any good of what I earn." 

% % * * s(s sj: s|s 

I agreed that the faith did seem a bit expensive, but 
good things come high everywhere. 

"Do you think the children in Utah are good or 
bad?" 

"Rotten," he said emphatically. "There was a 
woman wrote a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune about 
the school kids here. It wasn't half strong enough. 
But you can't expect so much of the children ; I know 
some girls here that their own father ruined." 

"But that is a terrible crime," I said. "A man gets 
a life sentence for that." 

"Not here," the boy asserted. "This man only got 
six months." 

I remembered coming through Walla Walla, where 
the State prison of Washington is situated, a year ago 
this autumn. Our train stopped opposite the prison, 
and the sheriff of Colfax got off, and led a handcuffed 
man slowly up the path to the iron gates. It was near- 
ing sunset, and the red reflection of the setting sun 

102 



THE HORNETS NEST. 

shone on the gray walls of the prison and glinted from 
the barred windows. Somebody said that the man was 
to be committed for life, and a murmur of sympathy 
ran through the car, until it was whispered from seat 
to seat the nature of the crime for which he was giv- 
ing up the liberty of the remainder of his life — the 
same crime as men in Utah are sentenced to six months 
for — and no one thought the life sentence severe 
enough. 

Why is there this difference ? Is not one reason that 
the State deals so gently with such crimes as the one 
above alluded to because the church started, and has 
always upheld, perversions of the moral law? Is not 
that one reason why Utah as a State is so accustomed 
to awful moral conditions that she gives such offenders 
six months, where her sister States give life sentences ? 
I did not say it was, I asked you. 

Is it another traceable result of polygamy ? I believe 
I must close by saying that I am sore afraid that the 
sins of Utah to-day started many years ago with the 
sins of the fathers' polygamy. Good never yet came 
from evil. 



103 



XL 
WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND IF HE CAME. 



One woe is past; and behold there came two more here- 
after.— Rev. IX. 12. 



Brother Amos had dropped in to tea at Sister 
Loomis'. She always had hot scones and jam tart 
and cup cake at tea, and, shocking to tell, despite the 
Word of Wisdom, black tea. Brother Amos always 
told her the sin of this indulgence, the while he passed 
his cup to be refilled ; he always said that he feared he 
would have a headache, so maybe he better drink it 
this time. As for Sister Loomis, she said that if a cup 
of tea would keep her out of the Kingdom, then she 
would stay out. She was an Englishwoman, and kept 
her native method of ministering to the body after she 
had accepted the Mormon custom of nourishing the 
spirit. 

She had been persuaded to come to Zion, and, to- 
gether with the rest of His chosen, await the second 
coming of Christ ; she had a fancy that she would find 
them all fairly panting with eagerness for that day to 
dawn — they were, meeting-time, but after — well, they 
seemed about as anxious for the loaves and fishes as 
did the unredeemed. Sister Loomis was too British 
to see a joke, and so she puzzled over the condition in 
the antechamber. She asked Brother Amos about them 

104 



WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND. 

while she dished the tea. Brother Amos answered her 
indirectly, in his prayer. He always prayed through 
his nose, under the impression, apparently, that a nasal 
tone was the best to carry upward. He reminded God 
of the promise that Christ was to come again, and 
soon, to confound the wicked; and asked, earnestly 
and nasally, that He would send that His followers 
have more faith, and would trust without question to 
those in authority, and to rely on the word of the 
anointed prophet. Sister Loomis felt rebuked, but, be- 
ing English, she still wondered what the Lord Christ 
wanted of all the tithing collected in His name. He 
who had been a humble laborer of Galilee ; and what 
He, whose name stands for purity, would think of 
certain things in Zion if He should come before "those 
in authority" would have time to close the back en- 
trance. 



To tell the truth, Sister Loomis' faith had lacked the 
solidity of the mountain ever since she had taken in 
old lady Page, and, too, since her young daughter, 
Pearl, had quite refused to stay in of nights. Pearl 
had been a good girl in England ; but here, her mother 
sickened with apprehension at the way she was "going 
on." Grandma Page had been on the hands of the 
relief society for some time ; it gets tiresome, relieving 
the same person all the time, as every one knows, so 
Sister Loomis, being new and zealous, had been in- 
duced to give her a home — the need of one would be 
short. The old lady had long since outgrown her use- 
fulness, and her husband, noble man, had taken a 
younger wife and moved away, so as not to be need- 

105 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

lessly annoyed by any silly claims this useless old 
woman might make on him. She was sort of annoying 
because she didn't seem especially grateful to the 
church for keeping her alive, or to Sister Loomis for 
giving her a home. She was wont to sit broodingly 
silent near the fire; she would seldom go to the table 
at meal-time, and often forgot to eat what Sister 
Loomis took to her. To-day, however, she seemed sort 
of "perked up," and interested in what they were say- 
ing. She hobbled over to the table and sat down, 
facing Brother Amos, but she spoke to Sister Loomis. 
Her voice sounded, some way, like the dry rustle of 
a sere leaf, and her face was the color of its last dun 
hue, before the snow covered its decay. 

"Ye was askin' what Christ 'ud find if He come," 
she said. "I'd d'know what all He'd find, but if ye 
hark I'll tell ye a few things a-waitin' fer the cleansin' 
fire an' the flamin' sword that is promised in the 
Word." 

She moistened her dry lips, and Brother Amos unctu- 
ously passed her a scone, which she waved aside with 
a gesture of her withered, fleshless hand. 

"Saint Paul," reminded Brother Amos, who knew 
something of what she could tell if she were allowed 
to talk, "commanded that women keep silent in the 
sanctuary, and I take that to mean silent regarding 
those matters it is not given them to understand." 

"The Bible says, too, that all men are liars," Sister 
Loomis said, with spirit. "And it don't say 'except 
Saint Paul/ either. Go on, grandma. You was 
sayin'?" 

The old woman laughed, and her laugh sounded like 
the crackle of dried leaves, blown about by an adverse 

106 



WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND. 

wind. "If ever the Mormons git a man-heaven/' she 
said, "it will be full of tongueless women. I mind me 
when Brother Kimball used to speak of his wives as 
'noisy heifers' ; all is, though, he never treated 'em half 
so well. In them days, wives was plentier nor cattle, 
an' treated with less notice." 



Brother Amos, who had listened fidgetingly to this ar- 
raignment against some of his sainted leaders, suc- 
ceeded in catching Sister Loomis' eye, and surrep- 
titiously tapped his forehead and smiled meaningly. The 
old woman saw his gesture. Her eyes flamed as with 
an afterglow of an all but extinguished fire. "Funny 
an' strange it is that I ain't off here," she said, tap- 
ping her seamed old brow in exact imitation of his 
gesture, "but I ain't, and I never was. Trouble with 
me an' the Mormons was, I was always too sane fer 
'em. I am yet. I sorter hang in with some of the 
women, because they are good and unhappy if they 
don't believe the fearful things you all teach, an' good 
an' crazy if they do ; ain't no harm in 'em either way." 

Sister Loomis pressed a saucer of cooled tea on the 
old woman, who balanced it with two tremulous hands 
and drank it gurglingly. 

"I don't know as she should overdo talking," Brother 
Amos said, as he reached for a jam tart. 

" 'Twould be terrible for me to overdo," grandma 
retorted, with a sarcastic little echo of a laugh. "Ye 
mout need a dose o' bitters afore ye git through lis- 
tenin' to me overdo. Is this a spring or a fall storm?" 
she asked of the younger woman, as a gust of wind 
rattled the windows and shook a handful of sodden 

107 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

leaves from the box elder-tree that shielded the house 
from the street. 

"It is fall, grandma, don't you mind?" 

"You see" — Brother Amos spoke with an assumption 
of pity — "poor grandma don't even mind the time o' 
day, or year." 

"I do git forgetful of them little things," the old 
woman agreed, "but the big ones — them I remember, 
an' I am saving of 'em up to tell Christ when He 
comes." 

"I don't know as you have aught against me," 
Brother Amos said, as though he had been accused. 

"I have some things to recall agin' your kind," she 
answered with asperity. She allowed herself another 
saucerful of tea. "That was spring," she said, "dur- 
ing a spring rain." 

Sister Loomis reached up on the clock-shelf and 
took down her knitting. Brother Amos shifted un- 
easily in his chair and cleared his throat. He wished 
he had the authority of Saint Paul and could com- 
mand silence in the babbling sex. Such tales were not 
good for new, well-paying converts to hear. Whoever 
supposed that, after years of stupid silence, the old 
woman would take a notion to talk ? But she was con- 
tinuing, her cracked old voice was growing stronger as 
she continued speaking: "I was saying that it was 
springtime, an' that there was a storm, rattlin' the 
windows like this. I never hear that sound, or the 
creak of tree branches 'out I think on that night. The 
storm come up sudden and fierce, as though 
God A'mighty Himself was sending it in anger at 
their doin's." She fell silent a moment, and Brother 
Amos essayed a wink at Sister Loomis. "I wish," she 

108 



WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND. 

spoke again presently, withdrawing her eyes with an 
effort from the open window, through which she saw 
the bared branches of the trees tossing in the dreary 
wind, "you'd pull down that window-shade. I seem 
to see the spirits of them that's gone, an' I am wont 
to fall to talkin' to them of things we knew an' re- 
member, instead of to you — of things you never heard 
of, or hev forgot." 

* sfc * sj: * jJs ■* 

Sister Loomis lowered the shade. 

"What things, grandma?" she asked. 

"Things to do with them airly days, with my own 
husband an' our little girl — was her spirit I thought I 
saw then, in the wind, the yellow turn of a leaf seemed 
to grow into her shinin', silken hair. We never took 
stock in the Mormons ; John, my man, was against 
them from the first. He was a schoolmaster, but he 
got lung fever, an' we thought to change country, an' 
homestead. We crossed the plains with a wagon. We 
had a terrible time ; I can feel the heat of that desert 
sun on my head to this day ; we run out of water, an' 
would 'a' left our bones bleachin' if we hadn't 'a' fell in 
with a train of Mormons. They agreed to take us 
with them if we would side in with their faith. Seemed 
a small enough thing to do then, but we never guessed 
— we never guessed what it meant when we promised 
— out there in that scorchin' desert path, to join in 
their ways. We got settled, an' one day here come 
the bishop, sayin' that he had had a revelation from 
A'mighty God to take me for his wife. John flared up 
awful. 'She is my lawful wife!' he yells, 'an' you are 
a liar/ He went then, mutterin'. Next night two 
men called an' warned John not to go agin' God's wish. 

109 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

He laughed at them, an' they went. Next day there 
was a number writ in the sand in our dooryard, the 
next it was on our door, an' every day as sure as 
mornin' came we saw the number. My little girl 
would point it out with her finger and laugh. Laugh ! 
Dear God! One evenin', drawin' on dusk, a officer 
came in, an', showing his badge, says to John, 'I arrest 
ye in the name of the law/ 'What for?' asked John, 
wonderin', fer if ever a man was law-abidin' it was him. 
'Fer stearin' sheep/ he says. 'We found 'em in your 
paster.' 'That's a lie!' John yells. 'I just come from 
the paster an' there weren't no sheep there.' For an- 
swer the man opened the back door an' pointed out, 
an' there, sure enough, we could see a little bunch of 
sheep huddled together in our paster. 'There may be 
a mistake,' the officer says, 'an' if there be, it will be 
as easy as rollin' down hill fer ye to git off, but until 

it can be straightened out ' He put his hand on 

John's shoulder, an' I, knowin' what it meant, put 
my arm around him an' begun to cry. Officer seemed 
sorter put out, an' he says, says he, 'Now, looky here, 
Brother Page, I don't believe you stole them sheep ; I 
hate to lock ye up, I do so ; but ye have been a leetle 
stiff-necked with the church, an' it may be a bit of disci- 
plinin ye need. Them sheep bein' stole, an' bein' found 
on your land so, makes it look queer, but I'm soft- 
hearted, I am/ he says, sorter smackin' his lips, 'and 
I'll tell ye what I'll do ; I'll leave the window of the 
jail unbarred — by mistake,' winkin' at me, 'an' when it 
gits dark, you make your escape. Do you see?' We 
didn't see, and John said so, but the officer said, 'Waal, 
I will of done my dooty, arrestin' of you, an' the au- 
thorities will be so dumfounded at their own careless- 

IIO 



WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND. 

ness in leavin' the window unbarred, as they will sup- 
pose, that, chances is, nothin' more'll be said to you/ 
Of course, there was no other way but for John to go, 
an' I, in spite of the officer's fair words, felt such a 
sick feelin' of dread that I took my little girl an' fol- 
lowed close behind them. I stole up as close as I could, 
an' hid in a clump of bushes just outside the jail. I 
saw a light flare up, an' John an' the officer movin' 
around in the cell ; I saw the officer f umblin' with the 
window; then John tried it, an' turnin' around, glad- 
like, an' shakin' hands with the officer. Then we 
waited. Night came on, an' a chill wind began to blow, 
the trees moaned like they do to-night, an' I kept 
hearin' a sound like the breathin' of excited people, but 
I allowed that it must be my own heart I heard. Kitty 
clung clost to me, an' I lulled her to sleep ; then, finally, 
Mormonism — Twenty Four 

after a long time, I see John come to the window an* 
look all around, then raise it slowly, an' put out his 
head, an' then — an' then — he started to climb out, an' 
—an' " 

She took to trembling so violently that she could 
not speak, her weak, quivering chin dropped. Pearl, 
who had come in unobserved during the old lady's 
monologue, ran to her and put her strong young arm 
around the bowed old shoulders. Sister Loomis hastily 
poured a bit of liquor in a cup and gave it to her. 

"You see," Brother Amos said, "I warned you 
against allowing her to talk." 

The old lady gave him a half-smile, full of mean- 
ing, and in a moment continued speaking in a con- 
trolled voice. "Then a number of men ran out, from 
all around the bushes near where we was hid, an' — 

in 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

an' — murdered him there in cold blood, before my very 
eyes." 

"Oh !" the girl cried out, shuddering. "Don't !" 

"You see," Brother Amos said, "I suppose they 
thought he was breakin' jail." 

"You hush," the old woman hissed. He hushed. 
"He was betrayed, murdered, by the same low treach- 
ery that has lured many a man an' woman to their 
death. I ran to him, fightin' my way through that pack 
of wild beasts that A'mighty had made a mistake an' 
put in the form o' men ; they was hackin' his dear body 
in the sign o' the four (if ye don't know what that is, 
Brother Amos here can tell ye)." 

There was another palpitating silence before she 
could gather strength to go on : "An' then, when they 
had him mutilated they took him an' me an' my little 
girl an' locked us in a room together. I begged — 
oh, God ! how I begged ! — that they wouldn't make my 
baby look at that terrible, bleeding thing that had been 
her father, but they pushed right up to him, an' her, 
nothin' but a baby who had known nothin' but lovin' 
looks an' fair words all her life. They told her an' 
me to look until we had learned what happened to 
them as went agin' the law of the church. I don't 
know how long we was locked up ; I hev lost all count. 
Next I remember, I was at bishop's house ; one of his 
wives was carin' for me, I was like a infant. When 
I asked for Kitty, they told me that she was dead. I 
never knew if that was true, if they had killed her, or 
if some fiend had stole her away. The bishop had his 
way an' married me. I — I reckon it must have been a 
long time ago." 

She held one withered hand up before her eyes, and 

112 



WHAT CHRIST WOULD FIND. 

looked at it closely. "I must be very old," she said 
musingly. "I hev waited from youth on to now, to 
see that day dawn when A'mighty God would fulfil 
His promise." Slow and solemn as a benediction she 
pronounced the last words of her story: "Vengeance 
is mine, saith the Lord. I will repay." 

The wind, grown more boisterous, tore madly round 
the house. The fire flared up on the hearth and il- 
luminated the strangely contrasted faces in the little 
group in Sister Loomis' dining-room. The old woman, 
exhausted, had fallen asleep in her chair. Sister 
Loomis pointed a dramatic finger at her unconscious 
form. "If Christ should come He would find such 
as she," she said. 

"And such as me," the girl half-moaned. 

"You, Pearl?" her mother asked; she looked at her 
and hid her face in her apron. 

"Every one here seems the same," the girl said des- 
perately. "They don't think like we did in England 
about things. It — it was a missionary himself who — 
who told me that God did not side in with the law of 
the wicked Gentiles ; but because they persecuted us 
so, we had to keep our sacred love a secret ; then, when 
I told him I must tell you, he — he laughed at me, an' 
said he had a wife, an' that if I told, they would send 
us both to jail. Don't look at me like that, mother. I 
never wanted to leave our church or England, and it 
was you who made me trust the Mormons. I didn't 
think a Mormon missionary would lie. There are 
plenty of girls like me, and I can tell you things you 
never dreamed of. I know a boy right here in Ogden, 
who is a father, and he ain't sixteen. I know a little 
girl who has had two babies, an' she ain't fifteen, and 

113 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

she ain't married. Oh, I can tell things ! If Christ 
does come, He will find old women like her, and young 
ones like me, and boys and girls like I tell you about, 
and" — turning fiercely on Brother Amos, "worse than 
all, men like you!" 

Brother Amos left. He not only feared a headache, 
but he had one. He felt timid, too, and the wavering 
shadows of the trees and the moaning sigh of the 
wind seemed replete with terrible meaning. He stood 
still. Was it the wind, or was it a woman's cry? He 
shuddered with terror. 

If Christ comes, He will find many as guilty a con- 
science as Brother Amos'. 



114 



XII. 

A LITTLE STORY OF THE RISE OF THE 

MORMONS. 

The writer of these little idyls of the Mormons has 
been severely criticized, even threatened, about the use 
of the word authentic, which has been used in reference 
to the published work. As long as they were written 
as fiction, said a saint, then they could not injure the 
church (the rock upon which it was built seems to 
have been set in quicksand, anyway), but as truth ! If 
the writer escaped civil punishment, she would be sure 
to have celestial chastisement meted out for so daring 
to reveal to a gaping world some of the sacred secrets 
of an alleged religion. 

The stories published heretofore are not strictly ver- 
batim testimony, and in a sense are not absolutely 
authentic, and it is the present purpose of the writer 
to tell why. The actual, authentic, provable facts that 
have been investigated for the purpose of putting cer- 
tain phases of the saints' doctrine in the form of stories 
were in every instance too horrible, too blasphemous, 
too obscene, to be artistically available for the purpose 
for which they were written. They are not, then, au- 
thentic in so much as a veil of decency has perforce 
been drawn over the hideousness of the undraped 
facts. For example, in the story which will give the 
book its name, the impression is left that after the 

115 



THE REVELATION IN THE 'MOUNTAIN. 

agonizing prayer in the mountain height, when, as she 
felt, the Mormon woman drew near to God, that her 
supplication was heard, and that the second wife was, 
as she had begged, treated as a daughter. Any one 
familiar with the teaching and practise of the Mor- 
mons would know that such an ending would never 
actually have occurred, but it would have been too 
ribald to have written, as was the fact, that less than 
a year after his promise to his first wife, he had a 
child by the adopted daughter. It would not be decent 
to tell about that revelation of the halo surrounding 
Brigham, that, before it was ''called in," resulted in 
dozens of little graves so placed in the cemetery that 
they can be told on that last day, from the ones born in 
what they paraphrase wedlock. Just how these chil- 
dren were brought into the world, and why they all 
died in infancy, would not do, artistically, to have told, 
any more than it would do, verbatim, to tell why one 
of the old "teachers" said that their work was easier 
now than it was before the manifesto; it wouldn't do 
to tell, word for word, the reason why a certain polyg- 
amous wife stood at her doorway with an axe in her 
hand for days, or why certain little girls are invalids 
that are being cared for by a mission that the writer 
wots of. 



Just here I am minded to tell a little story about 
that wonderful, mysterious manuscript that stands as 
a particular star to guide the brotherhood of saints. 
We are told, whenever we go through the tabernacle, 
that the Mormons are a remnant of the lost tribe re- 
ferred to in the Scriptures. They have been lost all 

116 



RISE OF THE MORMONS. 

right, but, as nearly as can be judged, have never been 
found; as for the remnant part — that's all right, too, 
only that they have been marked down until it were 
cheaper to leave them than to take them, even if one 
got a bonus for so doing. But about that sacred man- 
uscript, portions of which were revealed as fast as it 
was thought that the spiritual bread contained therein 
could be digested. Did you ever wonder where that 
manuscript came from? 

The writer met a very old lady recently, who told 
the following story. If it should be true, as she thinks 
it is, then for those who have placed the hope of their 
soul's salvation on the testimony translated from that 
ancient, mysterious writing, it would be to laugh. 
"Blessed," says the Bible, "are they who can believe 
without seeing ;" and the Mormons seem to have been 
blessed (or cursed) insomuch as they have believed 
without thinking, for, if they thought — they wouldn't 
be Mormons. 

Many years ago, in Illinois, lived a family whom 
we will now call Smith. They were hard-shelled Pres- 
byterians. The father was noted as a Bible student, 
and, as he had served as a missionary to the Indians 
and made himself thoroughly conversant with their 
fantastic legends and customs, was counted a man of 
great learning, and so authoritative that all denomina- 
tions came to him to settle doctrinal disputes. He had 
a large family, which he ruled with the Bible and a 
rod: They all went in for learning, and the eldest boys 
were sent to an academy, and there fell in with a young 
Bible student named Ransom Dunn, who afterward 
became a famous preacher. As this young man was 
weak alike on funds and book learning, an arrangement 

117 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

was made whereby he was to stay in the family and 
exchange chores for such teaching as Mr. Smith and 
his sons could give him. About this time, however, 
the health of the older man failed, and, realizing from 
the nature of his malady that he would have very little 
more time to live, he spent almost all his time in wri- 
ting. One day he took a big roll of manuscript, closely 
written, and tied about with leather thongs, to his wife 
and told her that there was written on those pages that 
which, if given into the right hands, would keep her 
from the almshouse after he was gone. 

She put it carefully away in a bureau drawer and 
thought no more about it until the following winter. 
The evenings being long and often dull, she brought 
it out and bade the young men read it and see if they 
could discover therein anything that would bring in 
money in case the wolf got too clamorous at the door. 

They began reading aloud, with many stops for 
argument and much searching of the Bible for the au- 
thority for some startling facts. 

Some of these they traced to the book and others to 
the Indian legends. It was very interesting, and the 
younger children often sat up late at night to listen to 
the reading and the discussions of the new religion out- 
lined in the writing of their father. 



This same winter, near the "breaking up" of the 
spring, there came to this hamlet a young man named 
Joseph Smith, who said he was a prophet of God. 
Now, these young men went to see him, and being, as 
has been stated, somewhat long on learning, told the 
prophet that he needed a little more educating. It is 

118 



RISE OF THE MORMONS. 

said that he and some of his followers were told the 
story of the wonderful manuscript then in their pos- 
session, and that the prophet went to their home and 
they to his little meeting-house, built on planks across 
the creek, as no one was willing to allow the new re- 
ligion to be taught on his soil. 

Spring opened and with its budding came the annual 
need of cleaning house. When the widow went to 
clear out the bureau, in one of the drawers of which 
was kept the manuscript, it was gone! They hunted 
both high and low; they minutely questioned each of 
the thirteen children, they asked the young man named 
Ransom Dunn and the prophet called Joseph Smith, but 
no trace of it was ever found. That is, no trace of the 
original manuscript, but it is alleged by the one living 
member of that family, who now, at the age of ninety- 
seven, is awaiting her summons hence, that the manu- 
script was the same, and the doctrines found therein 
are identical with those which her father had written 
in whimsical mood the winter before his death, and 
that they are no more ancient than is the birth of that 
fantastic, irrational religion called Mormonism. 

This old lady remembers the prophet very well. 
She recalls telling him that she would not want to go 
to a heaven reached by walking over women's hearts, 
and, she says, from the isle of memory drift snatches of 
conversation held between those people who are now 
only a name, and from that far-away isle she is carry- 
ing an impression to the shore of eternity that the 
church which calls itself the Latter-day Church of 
Jesus Christ stole a manuscript written by her father 
the winter before the prophet, Joseph Smith, came to 
Illinois. 

119 



XIII. 
THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 



Mysteries of the Endowment House and Oath of 
Vengeance of the Mormon Church, as Testified to 
by Professor Walter Wolfe, Late of the B. Y. 
College at Logan, and the Whole Endowment 
Ceremony, as Sworn to by Him at Washington, 
on Wednesday, February 7, 1906, Before the Sen- 
ate Committee on Privileges and Elections, in Its 
Hearing in the Smoot Case. 



On entering the annex to the Temple the candidate 
is ushered into a room on the right, where he presents 
his "recommend," which must be signed by his ward 
bishop and by the president of the stake from which 
he comes. With the presenting of his "recommend" 
he is expected to make a contribution toward the Tem- 
ple services, although this is voluntary with him. 

From this room he passes to another on the left, 
where he gives his records and receives the name of 
the one for whom he is to work in case he has no re- 
lation of his own whom he wishes to save. 

The records being attended to, the prayer-room is 
next entered. About the walls of this room are the 
pictures of the president and apostles of the church. 
A raised stand at one end of the room accommodates 

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THE MORMON TEMPLE AT SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH.— Page 120. 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

those who preside and who instruct the candidates. Be- 
fore entering the prayer-room the candidates remove 
their shoes. This is usually done in the long, covered 
passageway that leads from the annex to the Temple 
proper. The services are very simple, consisting 
usually of the singing of two hymns, some remarks, 
and prayer. 

As soon as the exercises are finished, all proceed to 
the dressing-rooms, except those men who are to re- 
ceive endowment for the dead. Those pass into the 
back part of the prayer-room, and some of the regu- 
lar Temple workers go to each candidate, lay their 

hands on his head, and say: "Brother , in the 

name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the authority of 
the holy Melchisedec priesthood, I ordain you an elder 
in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for 
and in behalf of - — , who is dead." 

IN THE DRESSING-ROOM. 

In the dressing-room all clothing is removed except- 
ing the garments, and these are taken off and handed 
to one of the attendants as the candidate enters the 
bathtub. The man who attends to the washing rubs 
the head, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the lips, the 
breast, the vitals, the loins, the legs, and the feet. This 
being done, the candidate leaves the tub, is hurriedly 
wiped dry, and then mounts a stool, where he is 
anointed with oil poured from a ram's horn, the same 
parts being anointed that were washed just previously. 
He then stands while a man places his garments over 
his shoulders, telling him that these garments are a 
pattern of those which the Lord gave to Adam in the 
Garden of Eden; telling him further that they must 

121 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

not be removed, and that they will prove a protection 
in time of danger. With the garments he whispers 
into the candidate's ear a new name — usually one taken 
from the Bible — and he is instructed never to reveal 
this name to any person except as it may be required 
at one point during the Temple ceremony. If he is 
working for the dead, he is informed that when he is 
through the Temple ceremony the name may be for- 
gotten, as it is the property of the dead and not his 
own. 

The candidate then goes back to the dressing-room, 
where he puts on a shirt and a pair of white pants ; 
also white stockings. He carries with him a bundle 
containing robes, cape, sandals, and apron. 

IN CREATION-ROOM. 

He then goes to the creation-room, where the men 
are seated on the right, the women on the left. The 
delay here is long and tedious, as the walls are bare 
and the ceremony of washing and anointing takes a 
long time, if there happen to be more candidates. 

At length the silence is broken, and a man enters a 
door in the front of the room dressed in white flannel 
and representing Elohim, the greatest of the Mormon 
deities. He makes the statement that any who wish 
to retire may do so ; that everything which is heard and 
seen is to be kept a profound secret — that which has 
been already passed through as well as that which is to 
come. Seeing none who wish to retire, he continues : 

"Brethren, you have been washed and pronounced 
clean; that is, clean from the blood and sins of this 
generation. You have been anointed that you may be- 
come kings and priests to our God and His Christ ; not 

122 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

that you have been anointed kings and priests, but that 
you may become such; this will depend upon your 
faithfulness. 

"You, sisters, have been washed and anointed that 
you may become queens and priestesses to your lords ; 
that is, your husbands. 

THREE VOICES HEARD. 

"You will now hear three voices — Elohim, Jehovah, 
and Michael. Now, give your attention and hear what 
you shall hear." 

Elohim disappears, and immediately his voice is 
heard from a remote part of the adjacent room : 

Elohim — Jehovah and Michael, there is matter un- 
organized. Let us go down and make a world like 
unto the other worlds we have created. 

Jehovah and Michael — We will go down. 

It is evident, then, that Elohim remains in the celes- 
tial world, while Jehovah and Michael have to do with 
the creation of this. The work is carried on in strict 
accordance with the account as given in Genesis. At 
the end of each day Jehovah says to Michael: "We 

will go down and report this, the labor of the 

day." Michael replied : "We will return and report." 
They then retire to the back part of the room and 
address Elohim, telling him what they have done, and 
get assigned their duties for the next day. 

After the completion of the work, Elohim, Jehovah, 
and Michael enter through the door at which Elohim 
had entered before. Michael takes a chair, while Elo- 
him and Jehovah stand on either side. 

Elohim — See the earth that we have made. There 
is no man in it to till the ground. 

123 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 
Jehovah — Let us make a man in our own image. 

HE FALLS ASLEEP. 

Elohim and Jehovah then pass their hands over 
Michael's body, breathe on him, and he falls asleep. 

Elohim (to the audience) — This man who is being 
operated on is Michael. When he awakes he will have 
forgotten everything and become as a little child and 
will be known as Adam. 

Whereupon Adam awakes. 

Elohim — It is not good for man to be alone. 

Jehovah — It is not good, for we are not alone. 

Elohim — We will cause a deep sleep to fall upon 
Adam and make for him a woman to be with him. 

The male part of the audience are then told to close 
their eyes, to imitate Adam's sleep. While Adam sleeps 
Eve enters and stands beside him. Elohim wakens 
Adam and says : 

Elohim — Adam, see the woman we have created for 
you. What will you call her? 

Adam — Eve. 

Elohim — Why Eve? 

Adam — Because she is the mother of all living. 

Elohim (to Jehovah) — We will plant a garden east- 
ward in Eden, and there we will put the man whom we 
have made. 

Elohim (to the audience) — The brethren will now 
follow Adam, and the sisters will follow Eve. 

IN GARDEN OF EDEN. 

All go up one flight of stairs to the Garden of Eden. 
The sides of this wall are painted to represent a tropical 
scene, and birds and beasts seem to be at perfect 

124 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

peace with each other. At one end of the room is the 
altar, and behind this an elevator, on which the gods 
descend and ascend. Near the front and to the left 
of the altar as the audience faces it is the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

Elohim and Jehovah are both present. Elohim ad- 
dresses Adam: 

Elohim — Adam, you see the garden we have planted 
for you. Of all the trees of the garden you may surely 
eat except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. 
Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye 
die. Now, be happy and enjoy yourselves. We go 
away, but we shall return. 

Elohim and Jehovah then ascend in the elevator in 
sight of the audience. 

Adam (to audience) — Now, brethren, calm your 
minds and be not surprised at anything you shall see 
or hear ; we shall be visited soon. 

Enter Devil, from back room, usually wearing a 
silk hat, carrying a cane, and having on a Masonic 
apron, with the pillars surmounted by the balls. 

Devil — Adam, you have a nice world here, patterned 
after the world where we used to live. 

Adam — I do not remember about any other world. 

Devil — Oh, I see you have not got your eyes opened 
yet. 

Goes to the tree, from which he pretends to pluck 
fruit, which he offers to Adam. 

Devil — Here, Adam, take some of the fruit of this 
tree. 

Adam — I shall not partake. 

Devil — Oh, you won't, won't you? Well, we shall 
see. Eve, will you take some of this fruit? 

125 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN, 

Eve — Who are you? 

Devil — I am your brother. 

Eve — You my brother, and come to tempt me to 
disobey my father? 

Devil — I said nothing about father. This will open 
your eyes, and you will know good from evil, virtue 
from vice, etc. 

Eve — Is there no other way? 

Devil — There is not. 

EVE TASTES THE FRUIT. 

(Eve then tastes the fruit, and Adam approaches.) 

Devil — Now go and get Adam to partake. 

Eve — I know thee now ; thou are Lucifer, who was 
cast out of heaven for his rebellion. 

Devil — Oh, I see you are beginning to get your eyes 
opened already. 

Eve — Adam, here is some of the fruit of that tree ; 
it is very pleasant to the taste and 'very desirable. 

Adam — I shall not partake. You know that father 
commanded us not to touch that tree. 

Eve — Do you intend to obey all of father's com- 
mands ? 

Adam — Yes, all of them. 

Eve — Well, our father commanded us to be fruitful 
and multiply and replenish the earth. Now I have par- 
taken of the fruit and shall be cast out of the garden, 
while you remain a lone man in the garden. 

Adam — Yes, I see. I will partake that man may be. 

Devil (nodding his head) — Yes, that is right. 

(Elohim appears.) 

Elohim — Adam, where are thou? Adam, where are 
thou? 

126 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

ADAM CONCEALS HIMSELF. 

(Adam, in the meantime, had conveniently concealed 
himself near the tree.) 

Adam — I heard thy voice as I was walking in the 
garden, but I was ashamed because I was naked, and 
I hid myself. 

Elohim — Who told thee that thou wast naked; hast 
thou eaten of the tree that I commanded thou shouldst 
not eat? 

Adam — The woman that thou gavest to be with me, 
she gave me of the fruit and I did eat. 

Elohim — Eve, what have you been doing? 

Eve — The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. 

Elohim — Lucifer, what have you been doing here? 

Devil — Oh, the same as we have been doing in other 
worlds ; I gave them some of the fruit to get their eyes 
open. 

Elohim then curses Lucifer, who defies him by say- 
ing: 

Devil — I will take the money and treasures of the 
earth and buy up popes and princes, armies and navies, 
and I will reign with blood and horror in the earth. 

Elohim then drives the devil away, who goes out of 
the door at which he entered, shaking his fist and 
stamping his heels. Adam then turns to the audience 
and says : 

Adam — In your bundles, brethren and sisters, you 
will each find an apron ; please put it on. 

When the request has been complied with, Elohim 
says: 

Elohim — Let Adam be cast out of the garden, and 
a cherubim be placed with a flaming sword to keep the 
way of the tree of life. 

127 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

As the elevator rises with Elohim and Jehovah on 
it, a sword is waved through the curtain. 

Eve now stands on Adam's left, and the first oath 
is administered by Adam. 

One couple from the audience kneel at the altar to 
represent Adam and Eve, and all present participate 
in the ceremony. The audience stands, the right hand 
raised to the square. 

FIRST OATH TAKEN. 

"We and each of us solemnly bind ourselves that we 
will not reveal any of the secrets of the first token of 
the Aaronic priesthood, with its accompanying name, 
sign, or penalty. Should I do so, I agree that my 
throat may be cut from ear to ear, and my tongue 
torn out by its roots." 

The name of this token is the new name of the can- 
didate, which he received when he was given his gar- 
ments. 

Grip — The grip is very simple : Hands clasped, 
pressing the point of the knuckle of the index finger 
with the thumb. 

Sign — In executing the sign of the penalty, the 
right hand, palm down, is placed across the body, so 
that the thumb comes directly under and a little be- 
hind the left ear. The hand is then drawn sharply to 
the right across the throat, the elbow standing out at 
a position of ninety degrees from the body, the hand 
is then dropped from the square to the side. 

Adam — The brethren will now follow Adam, and 
the sisters will follow Eve. 

IN DESOLATE WORLD. 

The next room, the "lone and desolate world," has its 
128 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

walls painted with scenes very different from those of 
the Garden of Eden ; animals are fighting and the scene 
is one of chaos. At the end of the room is an altar, 
behind which stands Adam and Eve. 

When Adam was cast out of the Garden of Eden he 
built an altar and called on the Lord, saying: 

Adam — Oh, Lord, hear the words of my mouth; 
oh, Lord, hear the words of my mouth; oh, Lord, 
hear the words of my mouth. 

As Adam speaks these words, he raises his hands, 
first high above his head, then to the square, then drops 
them to his side. The words used are: "Pale, Ale, 
Ale." We are told that in the pure Adamic language 
these words mean, "Oh, Lord, hear the words of my 
mouth." Adam, when asked why he is praying, re- 
plies that he does not know, only he has been so in- 
structed. 

(Lucifer enters.) 

LUCIFER ON THE GROUND. 

Devil — I hear you ; what do you want ? 

Adam — Who are you ? 

Devil — I am the god of this world. 

Adam — Who made you the god of this world? 

Devil — I made myself. What is it you want? 

Adam — I was calling on father. 

Devil — Oh, I see ; you want religion. I will have 
some preachers down here presently. 

(Enter preacher.) 

Parson (looking around) — You h?^e a very fine 
congregation here. 

Devil — Oh, are you a preacher? 

Parson — Yes. 

129 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Devil — Ever been to college and studied the dead 
languages ? 

Parson — Why, certainly. No man can preach the 
gospel unless he has been to college and studied the 
dead languages. 

Devil — If you will preach to this congregation and 
convert them, mind you, I will give you — let me see — 
four thousand dollars a year. 

PARSON SINGS HYMN. 

Parson — That is very little, but I will do the best 
I can. 

The parson then opens a hymn-book and leads in a 
hymn, while the devil prances around with a com- 
placent air. After the singing the parson turns to 
Adam and says : 

Parson — Do you believe in the great spirit who 
dwells beyond the bounds of time and space, and sits 
on the top of a topless throne ; who is so great that 
he can fill the universe, yet is so small that he can 
dwell in your heart, whose center is everywhere and 
whose circumference nowhere? 

Adam — No ; I do not believe a word of it. 

Parson — I am very sorry for you. But perhaps you 
believe in hell, that great, bottomless pit, which is full 
of fire and brimstone, into which the wicked are cast, 
and where they are ever burning and yet never con- 
sumed ? 

Adam — No ; I do not, and I am sorry for you. 

The voices of the gods are now heard from an upper 
room. 

Elohim (to Jehovah) — The man Adam seems to be 
true and faithful; let us send down to him Peter, 
James, and John. 

130 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

Jehovah — That is good. 

Elohim (to Peter, James, and John) — Go down to 
Adam, who seems to be a good and faithful man. 

(Peter, James and John descend by a stairway at 
the rear of the room.) 

Peter — Hello ! What is going on here ? 

Devil — We are making religion. 

Peter — What are you making it out'of ? 

Devil — Newspapers, novels, and notions of men and 
women sugared over 'with a little religion. 

Peter— How does it take with this congregation? 

Devil — Pretty well, all except that man Adam; he 
does not believe anything. 

Peter (to Adam) — Good morning. 

Peter — (taking Adam's hand) — What is that? 

Adam — The first token of the Aaronic priesthood. 

Peter — Will you give it to me? 

CANNOT GIVE TOKEN. 

Adam — I cannot, for it is connected with my new 
name ; but this is the same sign. 

(Peter. answers by the same sign.) 

Adam — You are a true messenger of Father. 

Peter — What do you think of the preaching of the 
parson this morning ? 

Adam — Why, he asked me if I believed in that 
Great Spirit who dwells beyond the bounds of time and 
space and sits on top of a topless throne; who is so 
great that he fills the universe, yet so small that he can 
dwell in your heart; whose center is everywhere and 
circumference nowhere. I told him I did not believe 
a word of it. 

Peter — I do not blame you. 

I3i 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Parson — Are you the apostles of the Lord Jesus 
Christ? 

Peter — We are. 

Parson (pointing to the Devil) — Why, he said that 
we were to have no more apostles, but if any man came 
along professing to be such, I was to ask them to cut 
off an arm or a leg, or some other member of the body, 
and stick it on again, just to show they had come with 
power. 

Peter — A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh 
a sign. Do you know that man? 

Parson — Certainly; he is a great gentleman, and 
stands at the head of all the religious denominations 
of to-day. 

Peter — Why, that is Lucifer. 

Parson — What! the Devil? 

Peter — Yes, I believe that is one of his names. You 
should get out of his service and have a settlement with 
him. 

Parson — If I get out of his service, what is to be- 
come of me ? 

Peter — Why, we will teach you the gospel in con- 
nection with the rest of the sons of Adam. 

Parson — Well, that is good. 

Parson (turning to the Devil) — Sir, is it not time 
we had a settlement ? 

Devil — Well, I will keep my word. I offered you 
four thousand dollars per year to convert this people, 
and, by what I can see, they have nearly converted you. 
Get out of my kingdom ; I do not want such men in 
it. 

PARSON RETIRES. 

(The Parson then retires by a back door, while 
132 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

Peter, James, and John ascend the stairs and report to 
Elohim the condition of the man Adam.) 

Elohim — Peter, James, and John, go down again in 
your true characters and reveal to Adam the second 
token of the Aaronic priesthood, and place the robe 
upon his left shoulder. 

(They descend.) 

Peter — I am Peter. 

James — I am James. 

John — I am John. 

Devil (scowling) — I thought I knew you. 

Peter (to Devil) — Begone! 

Devil — By whose authority? 

Peter (raising his arm to the square) — In the name 
of Jesus Christ, my Master. 

(The Devil disappears, scowling through the door 
where the minister had already disappeared.) 

The robes are then taken from the bundles and put 
on the candidates, as well as the caps and sandals. 
Then the apron is replaced and the oath is adminis- 
tered to all, standing : 

SECOND OATH ADMINISTERED. 

"We, and each of us, do solemnly promise and bind 
ourselves never to reveal any of the secrets of this 
priesthood, with its accompanying name, sign, grip, or 
penalty. Should we do so, we agree that our breasts 
may be torn open, our hearts and vitals torn out and 
given to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field." 

Sign — The sign is made by extending the right hand 
across the left breast, directly over the heart; then 
drawing it rapidly from left to right, with the elbow 
at the square ; then dropping the hand by the side. 

133 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

Name — The name is the given name of the candi- 
date. 

Grip — Clasp the right hand and place the thumb into 
the hollow of the knuckle, between the first and second 
fingers. 

(Again the brethren follow Adam and the sisters 
Eve, and the Celestial-room is entered.) 

IN CELESTIAL-ROOM. 

This room is divided into two parts by white cur- 
tains, through which there are several openings. Some 
of these are simply openings for convenience, but oth- 
ers have a significance in which the candidates are 
afterward instructed, for it is through these curtains 
that the candidates must pass to gain their exaltation. 
In front of the curtains is a raised platform, some 
three or four steps above the general level, and on thf 
platform the candidates wait, after their names have 
been called, until it is time for them to be admitted to 
the Sealing-rooms. 

In front of the platform and on the general level 
there is an altar, at which the true order of prayer is 
taught. As soon as the candidates are seated, Elohim 
is heard speaking to Peter, James, and John. 

Elohim — Go down to Adam and give him the first 
token of the Melchisedec priesthood, and place the robe 
upon the right shoulder. 

They go down, and Peter instructs them in the 
changing of the robe. 

After this, the following oath is administered to all, 
standing : 

THIRD OATH. 

"You, and each of you, do covenant and promise that 
134 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

you will never reveal any of the secrets of the priest- 
hood, with its accompanying name, sign, and penalty. 
Should you do so, you agree that your body may be 
cut asunder and all your bowels gush out." 

In this, the left hand is placed palm upright, directly 
in front of the body, there being a right angle formed 
at the elbow ; the right hand, palm down, is placed 
under the elbow of the left ; then drawn sharply across 
the bowels, and both hands are dropped at the side. 

Name — The Son. 

Sign — The sign is pressing with the forefinger and 
thumb the palm and back of the hand of the recipient 
of the Grip. This is called the "Sign of the Nail." 

Peter, James, and John return to Elohim, report, and 
come back to the audience. 

Peter — The brethren, all standing, will receive the 
second grip of the Melchidesec priesthood. 

Grip — Grasp right hands so that the little fingers 
are interlocked and the forefinger presses into the wrist. 

(This is called the patriarchal grip or true sign of 
the nail.) 

Tradition says that when the Savior was crucified 
the nail tore out the palm of his hand, so that they 
had to put another through the wrist. 

It has its accompanying name and penalty, and here 
are given the three important obligations: 

"law of sacrifice." 

Obligation. 

Peter — You and each of you do covenant and prom- 
ise that you will sacrifice your time, talents, and prop- 
erty to the upbuilding of the Church of Jesus Christ of 
Latter-day Saints. All bow your heads and say yes. 

135 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

"law of chastity/'' 

To the Men. 

Peter — You and each of you do covenant and prom- 
ise that you will not have sexual intercourse with any 
other than your lawful wife or wives, who may be 
given you by the priesthood. All bow your heads and 
say yes. 

To the Women. 

Peter — You and each of you covenant and promise 
that you will not have sexual intercourse with any per- 
son of the opposite sex save those who may have been 
given you by the priesthood. 

"law of vengeance/' 

Peter — You and each of you covenant and agree 
that you will pray, and never cease to pray, Almighty 
God to avenge the blood of the prophets upon this 
nation ; and that you will teach the same to your chil- 
dren unto the third and fourth generation. All bow 
your heads and say yes. 

(All having been seated, Elohim, or some one in 
authority, comes to the front of the platform and de- 
livers what is known as the sermon before the veil. On 
Wednesdays, when there are a number of neophytes, 
the address is very long and tedious ; the entire history 
of the Temple work is repeated, so that the candidates 
may have a clear understanding of what they have 
learned. The marks in the veil are also explained, 
with their significance and uses. Especially is it taught 
that Adam was not made out of the dust of this earth ; 
that he was begotten as any other man is begotten, and 
that when he came here he brought Eve, one of his 

136 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

wives, with him. I have heard that the sermon was 
the one delivered by Brigham Young at the dedication 
of the St. George Temple. On Thursdays and Fridays, 
when there are comparatively few who are going 
through the Temple for the first time, the sermon be- 
fore the veil is very much shortened, only the essential 
part which refers to the creation of Adam being read.) 

INSTRUCTED AS TO PRAYER. 

After the sermon, the candidates are instructed in 
the true order of prayer, as many couples as possible 
surrounding the altar, the elder who is to pray standing 
behind it. The signs of the holy priesthood are then 
given, the last one being the uplifted hands, and the 
words "Pale, Ale, Ale," repeated three times, in imita- 
tion of Adam's prayer. All stop with the patriarchal 
grip, the left elbow of one person resting upon the 
right shoulder of the next one. In this way the circle 
is made complete. 

The elder now kneels by the altar, his right arm 
raised to the square, his left hand extending, palm up, 
"as though to receive a blessing.' , 

A form of prayer is then offered, which serves as a 
type for similar prayers in every prayer circle of the 
Mormon priesthood. 

PASSING THROUGH THE VEIL. 

The candidates resume their seats and the process 
of passing through the veil begins. 

In the veil are to be seen the square and compass; 
also other openings which represent the slits in the 
knees of every garment, which are said to indicate that 
the time will come when every knee shall bow and 

137 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ. There 
are also openings for the hands, which are called open- 
ings of convenience. 

Three or four candidates come from behind the veil 
— men to act for men and women for women. The 
name of the candidate is called. He rises from his seat 
in the audience, accompanied by the woman or women 
whom he has brought with him, mounts the platform, 
and takes his seat until the attendants are ready for his 
turn. In going up the three steps of the platform the 
man must always precede. I once saw a young man 
step courteously aside to let his intended bride pre- 
cede him, when the attendant pushed her back and told 
him that if she preceded him there she would precede 
him in eternity. 

VEIL IS PARTED. 

All being ready, the attendant gives three gavel raps 
upon one of the pillars from which the veil is sus- 
pended. The veil is parted slightly and Elohim from 
behind the veil asks what is wanted. The attendant 
replies : "The man Adam, having been true and faith- 
ful in all things, desires to converse with the Lord be- 
hind the veil." The attendant prompts the candidate 
in his answers and grips, sometimes rehearsing the 
whole matter before Elohim takes the neophyte in hand. 

The neophyte gives the two grips of the Aaronic 
priesthood, with their accompanying name, also the first 
grip and name of the Melchisedec priesthood. He then 
gives the second grip of the Melchisedec priesthood. 

Elohim — What is this ? 

Neophyte — The second Grip of the Melchisedec 
priesthood. Patriarchal Grip, or Sure Sign of the 
Nail. 

138 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

Elohim — Has it a name ? 

Neophyte — It has. 

Elohim — Will you give it to me? 

Neophyte — I cannot, for I have not yet received it; 
for this purpose I have come to converse with the Lord 
behind the veil. 

Elohim — You shall receive it upon the five points of 
fellowship through the veil. These are : foot to foot, 
knee to knee, breast to breast, hand to back, and mouth 
to ear. 

WHISPERS TO CANDIDATE. 

Having placed the candidate in proper position, he 
whispers : 

"Health in the navel, marrow in the bones, strength 
in the loins and sinews, and power in the priesthood be 
upon me and my posterity through all generations of 
time and throughout eternity." 

The neophyte repeats this until he has it perfectly, 
and then stands back, while the attendant raps once 
more three times upon the pillar. 

Elohim — What is wanted ? 

Attendant — Adam, having conversed with the Lord 
through the veil, now desires to be admitted to His 
presence. 

Elohim — Admit him. 

As he says this, Elohim extends his hand and gives 
the novitiate a warm welcome. 

The man now assumes the part of Elohim and in- 
structs his women, even as he has been instructed him- 
self, admitting them behind the veil when they are 
prepared. 

HANDSOMEST ROOM IN THE TEMPLE. 

The room which is now entered is one of the most 
139 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

beautiful in the Temple ; it has rich carpets, elegant fit- 
tings and upholstery, and opening from it are the 
Sealing-rooms — small, and furnished in gold and white. 

In the main room is a table at which sits the re- 
corder, having before him the records of those who 
have just been through the Temple, and also the li- 
censes of those who have taken out the document which 
is required by the laws of the State before a marriage 
ceremony can be performed. 

The man and the woman who are to be married 
then pass into the Sealing-room, with such invited 
guests as they may desire to have with them. They are 
dressed in the Temple robes complete. 

IN SEALING-ROOM. 

In the middle of the Sealing-room is an altar of 
white, having on it a white velvet cushion, and on each 
side of it are kneeling-stools. Sitting opposite one 
end of the table is the man who performs the sealing 
ceremony, usually the president or acting president of 
the Temple. On each side of him is a witness. These 
three men are clothed in white suits, the same that they 
have been wearing through the Temple ceremonies. 
The candidates now kneel, one on each side of the altar, 
and clasp their hands in the Patriarchal Grip. The 
presiding elder asks them if they take each other for 
man and wife, for time and eternity, and, having re- 
ceived a satisfactory answer, unites and blesses them 
for time and eternity, promising a numerous posterity 
and all the blessings in the celestial kingdom that rea- 
sonable people could desire. 

This being finished, they are told to kiss each other 
across the altar. They then unclasp hands, and the 

140 



THE OATH OF VENGEANCE. 

ceremony is completed. They return to their dressing- 
rooms, put on the clothing that they wore to the Tem- 
ple, and the day's work is over. 



Professor Wolfe has just told of the ritual, the 
oath, and the ceremonies in the Mormon Temple. It 
was a most interesting story. It confirms in remark- 
able degree an expose of the ceremonies in the Endow- 
ment House of many years ago, as printed by The 
Tribune, and also President Smith's testimony that 
there had been no change in the proceedings. The old 
Endowment House expose is as follows : 

The Mormon Endowment House is a plain adobe 
building, two stories high, built like a small dwelling- 
house, so as not to attract attention. There are blinds 
to all the windows, which are nearly always kept down. 
It is situated in the northwest corner of the Temple 
block (which includes the Tabernacle, New Temple, 
etc.), and the whole block is surrounded by a very high 
wall. 

On a certain day, not necessary to mention, I went to 
the Endowment House at eight o'clock in the morning, 
taking with me my endowment clothes (consisting of 
garments, robe, cap, apron, and moccasins). I be- 
lieve people used to take their own oil, but that is now 
discontinued, as fees are charged. I went into a small 
room attached to the main building (designated in the 
plan by the name of Reception-room), which was 
crowded with men and women, having their bundles of 
clothing. The entrance door is on the east side, and 
in the southwest corner there is another, next to which 

141 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the desk stood, where the clerk recorded the names, etc. 
Around the north and west sides were benches for the 
people to sit. 

On going up to the desk I presented my recommend 
from the bishop in whose ward I was staying, and 
George Reynolds, who was then acting as clerk, asked 
me my name, those of my parents, when and where 
I was born, and when I was baptized into the Mormon 
Church. 




THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

That over, he told me to leave my hat, cloak, and 
shoes in that room; and, taking up my bundle, I went 
into the room marked 3 on the plan, where I sat wait- 
ing my turn till it came my turn to be washed. 

One of the women, an officiating high priestess, told 
me to come behind the curtain (which I have indicated 
by a waving line), where I could hear a great deal of 
splashing and subdued conversation. I went, and 
after I was undressed I had to step into a long bath, 
about half- full of water, when another woman proceed- 
ed to wash me. I objected strongly to this part of the 
business, but she told me to show a more humble spirit. 
However, when she got down to my feet she let me go, 
and I was turned over to the woman who had spoken 
to me first, and whose name was Bathsheba Smith 
(one of the widows of Apostle George A. Smith) . She 
wore a large, shiny apron, and her sleeves tucked up 
above her elbows. She looked thoroughly like business. 

Another woman was standing beside her with a large 
wooden spoon and some green olive oil in a cow's horn. 
This woman poured the oil out of the spoon into Bath- 
sheba's hand, who immediately put it on my head, ears, 
eyes, mouth, and every part of my body, and as she 
greased me, she muttered a kind of prayer over each 
member of my body : My head, that I might have 
a knowledge of the truths of God ; my eyes, that I 
might see the glories of the kingdom ; my mouth, that 
I might at all times speak the truth ; my arms, that they 
might be strong in defense of the gospel ; my bosom — 
and here I must ask my readers not to think I want 
to tell this part of the story, but I do want people to 
know the truth, and how disgusting and indelicate this 
thing is. Mormon people deny many of these things, 

143 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

and civilized and decent people can scarcely realize 
that this institution is as infamous as it really is, but 
I solemnly assert that these things do exist. To con- 
tinue: My bosom, that I might nourish the children 
whom I might raise by my husband (I was not then 
married, but expected to be), and another part of 
my body that I might raise up a goodly seed, that 
they might be pillars of strength to the upbuilding and 
strengthening of God's kingdom upon the earth. And 
so she got down to my feet, when she hoped they might 
be swift in the paths of righteousness and truth. 

She then turned me over to the woman who had 
washed me, and who whispered 

MY NEW AND CELESTIAL NAME 

in my ear. I believe I am to be called up in the morn- 
ing of the resurrection by it. It was "Sarah." I felt 
disappointed. I thought I should have received a more 
distinguished name. She told me that new name must 
never be spoken, but often thought of to keep away 
evil spirits. I should be required to speak it once 
that day, but she would tell me in what part of the 
ceremony, and that I should never again have to speak 
it. She then told me to put on my garments. These 
are made in one piece. On the right breast is a square, 
on the left a compass, in the center a small hole, and 
on the knee a large hole, which is called the "stone." 
We were told that as long as we kept them on no 
harm could befall us, and- that when we changed them 
we were not to take them all off at once, but slip out a 
limb at a time and immediately dive into the clean ones. 
The neck was never to be cut low, or the sleeves short, 
as that would be patterning after the fashion of the 
Gentiles. 

144 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 



After this I put on my clothes, and, in my stocking 
feet, waited with those who were washed and anointed 
until she had finished the remaining two or three. This 
done, the little calico curtains (marked A and B) were 
drawn aside, and the men and women stood revealed to 
each other. The men looked very uncomfortable and 
not at all picturesque. They only had their garments 
and shirts on, and they really did seem as though they 
were ashamed of themselves, as well they might be. 




APRON. 

(Worn by Men and Women.) 



Joseph F. Smith then came to where we were all 
waiting, and told us that if we wanted to "back out, 
now was our time," because we should not be able 
afterward, and that we were bound to go right through. 
All those who wanted to go through were to hold up 
their hands, which, of course, every one did, believing 
that all the good and holy things that were to be seen 
and heard in the "House of the Lord" were yet .to 
come. He then told us that if any of us attempted to 
reveal what we saw and heard in the "House" our 
memories would be blighted, and we should 

145 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

BE EVERLASTINGLY DAMNED, 

for they were things too holy to be spoken of between 
each other, after we had once left the Endowment 
House. We were then told to be very quiet and listen. 
Joseph F. Smith then went away. 

In a few moments we heard voices talking loudly so 
that the people could hear them in the adjoining room. 
(I afterward found out in passing through that it 
was the prayer circle room.) It was supposed to be a 
conversation between Elohim (Head God) and Je- 
hovah. The conversation was as follows : 

Elohim to Jehovah — "Well, Jehovah, I think we will 
create an earth; let Michael go down and collect all 
the elements together and found one." 

Answer — "Very well, O Lord God, it shall be done." 

Then, calling to another man, we could hear him 
say: 

"Michael, go down and collect all the elements to- 
gether and form an earth, and then report to us what 
you have done." 

Answer — "Very well, O Lord God." 

The man they called Michael then left the prayer 
circle room and came through the room they called the 
World, into the Garden of Eden, the door of which was 
shut that faced the places C and D, where we were 
standing, listening and waiting. He remained there a 
second or two, and everything was quiet. At the end 
of that time we heard him going back the same way, 
to where Elohim and Jehovah were waiting. When he 
got back he said: "I "have collected all the elements 
together and founded an earth ; what wouldst thou 
have me do next?" Using the same formula every 
time they sent him down to the world, they then told 

146 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

him to separate the land from the water, light from 
darkness, etc., and so they went regularly through the 
creation, but they always told him to come up and re- 
port what he had done. 

When the creation was supposed to be finished, 
Michael went back and told them it was very fair and 
beautiful to look upon. Elohim then said to Jehovah 
that he thought they had better go down and have a 
look at it, which they did, and agreed with Michael 
that it was a beautiful place ; that it seemed a pity that 
it should be of no particular use, but thought it would 
be a good idea to create man to live in it and cultivate 
these things. 




DEVIL'S APRON. 



They then came out of the Garden of Eden (which 
was supposed to have been newly finished) and, shut- 
ting the door after them, came to where we were stand- 
ing. We were then told to shut our eyes, and Jehovah 
said to Michael : "Give me a handful of dust and I 
will create man." We were then told to open our eyes, 
and we saw a man that he had taken from the crowd, 

H7 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

standing beside Jehovah, and to whom Jehovah said: 
"I shall call thee Adam, for thou shalt be called the 
father of all mankind." Jehovah then said it was not 
good for man to be alone, so he would create a woman 
and a helpmate for him. We were again told to close 
our eyes, and Adam was requested to go to sleep, which 
he obligingly did. Jehovah was then supposed to take 
a rib from Adam's side and form Eve. We were then 
told to open our eyes and look upon the handiwork 
of the Lord. When we did, we saw a woman taken 
from among the crowd who was standing by Adam's 
side. Jehovah said he would call the woman Eve, 
because she would be the mother of all mankind. 

THE DOOR OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

was then opened and all marched in with our bundles 
(the men going first, as they always take precedence), 
and we ranged ourselves round the room on benches. 
The four sides of this room are painted in imitation 
of trees, flowers, birds, wild beasts, etc. (The artist 
who painted the room was evidently more acquainted 
with whitewashing than painting.) The ceiling was 
painted blue, dotted over with golden stars; in the 
center of it was the sun, a little further along the moon, 
and all around were the stars. In each corner was a Ma- 
sonic emblem. In one corner is a compass, in another 
the square ; the remaining two were the level and the 
plumb. On the east side of the room, next the door, 
was a painted apple-tree, and in the northern part of 
the room was a small wooden altar. 

After we had seated ourselves, Jehovah told Adam 
and Eve that they could eat of every tree in the garden 
except of this particular apple-tree, for on the day that 
they ate of that they should surely die. 

148 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

He then took his departure, and immediately after 
in came a very lively gentleman, dressed in a plain 
black morning-suit, with a little apron on, a most 
fiendish expression on his face, and joyfully rubbing 
his hands. This gentleman was supposed to be "the 
Devil." Certainly his appearance made the supposi- 
tion quite easy (by the by, I have since seen that same 
gentleman administering the Sacrament in the Taber- 
nacle on Sundays). He went up to Eve and remarked 
that it was a beautiful place, and that the fruit was so 
nice, would she like to taste one of those apples. She 
demurred a little, and said she was told not to, and 
therefore mustn't. But he pretended to pluck one of 
the painted apples and gave it to her, and she pretended 
to eat it. He then told her to ask Adam to have some, 
and she did. Adam objected strongly to testing, know- 
ing the penalty, but Eve 'eventually overcame his scru- 
ples, saying : "Oh, my dear, they're so nice, you haven't 
any idea, and that nice old gentleman here (pointing 
to the Devil) says that he can recommend them, and 
you need not be afraid of what Jehovah says." 

Adam consented, and immediately after he said, "Oh, 
what have I done, and how foolish I was to listen to 
you." He then said he could see himself, and that 
they had no clothes on, and that they must sew some 
fig-leaves together. Every one then made a dive for 
his apron out of the little bundle. The apron is a 
square half-yard of green silk with nine fig-leaves 
worked on it in brown sewing-silk. A voice was then 
heard calling for Adam, who pretended to hide, when 
in came Jehovah. He gave Adam a good scolding, 
but finally told him that he would give him certain in- 
structions, whereby he would have a chance to regain 

149 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the presence of his Father and God after he was driven 
out into the world. These instructions consisted of 
grips, etc., and the garments he wore would protect 
him from all evil. (Mormons say of these garments 
that the pattern was revealed direct from Heaven to 
Joseph Smith, and are the same as were originally 
worn by Adam.) 

They then put on their caps and moccasins, the 
women's caps being made of Swiss muslin; it is one 
yard square, rounded at one corner so as to fit the 
head, and there are strings on it which tie under the 
chin. The moccasins are made of linen or calico. The 
men's are made exactly like those of pastry cooks, with 
a bow on the right side. I should here mention, before 
I go further, that Bathsheba Smith and one of the 
priests enacted the parts of Adam and Eve, and so 
stood sponsors for the rest of us, who were individually 
supposed to be Adams and 'Eves. 

They then proceeded to give us the first grip of the 
Aaronic or Lesser Priesthood, which consists in put- 
ting the thumb on the knuckle of the index finger, and 
clasping the hands round. We were then made to 
swear "To obey the laws of the Mormon Church and 
all they enjoin, in preference to those of the United 
States." The penalty for revealing this grip and oath, 
is that you will have your throat cut from ear to ear, 
and your tongue torn from your mouth, and the sign 
of the penalty is drawing the hand with the thumb 
pointing toward the throat sharply across and bring- 
ing the arm to the level of the square, and, with the 
hand upraised to Heaven, swearing to abide the same. 

We were then driven out of this into the room called 
the World, where there were three men standing at a 

150 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

small altar on the east side of the room, who were sup- 
posed to represent Peter, James, and John, Peter stand- 
ing in the center. He was supposed to have the keys 
of heaven. Men representing (or trying to) the dif- 
ferent religious sects then came in and presented their 
views and said they wanted to try and save these fallen 
children. In doing this they could not refrain from 
exaggerating and coarsely satirizing the different sects 
they represented. Previous to their coming in, how- 
ever, Peter had presented to us the gospel of Christ — 
at least he told us that Christ had come to die for the 
original sin, but that we had got to work out our own 
salvation, and that in the last days a prophet should be 
raised up to save all those that would believe in his 
divine mission ; consequently these different representa- 
tives were told that their doctrines did not suit the 
people and that there was something wanting in their 
faith and so they could go. Then the Devil came in 
and tried to allure the people, and, bustling up to the 
altar, Peter said to him : "Hello, Mr. Devil, how do 
you do to-day? It's a very fine day, isn't it? What 
have you come after?" The Devil replied that he 
didn't seem to take to any of those so-called Christian 
religions, why didn't they quit bothering about any- 
thing of that kind, and live a life of pleasure, etc.? 
However, he was told to go, and that quickly. 

Peter then gave the second grip of the Aaronic or 
Lesser Priesthood, which consists of putting the thumb 
between the knuckles of the index and second fingers 
and clasping the hand around. The penalty for re- 
vealing this is to be sawn asunder, and our members 
cast into the sea. The sign of the penalty was drawing 
the hand sharply across the middle of the body. To 

151 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

receive that grip we had to put on our robes, which 
consisted of a long, straight piece of cloth reaching to 
our feet, doubled over and gathered very full on the 
shoulder and round the waist. There was also a long, 
narrow piece of cloth tied around the waist, called the 
"sash." It was placed on the right shoulder, to receive 



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Stairway to Veil and Sealing room 



GROUND FLOOR OF THE ENDOWMENT HOUSE. 
Outer Wall Enclosing Endowment House. 

152 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the grip, the people to wear their apron over it. The 
men then took the oath of chastity, and the women the 
same ; they don't consider polygamy at all unchaste, but 
said that it was an Heaven-ordained law, and that a 
man to be exalted in the world to come must have 
more than one wife. The women then took the oath 
of obedience to their husbands, having to look up to 
them as their gods. It is not possible for a woman to 
go to Christ except through her husband. 

Then a man came in and said that the Gospel (which 
during those few minutes' intervals had laid dormant 
for 1800 years) had been again restored to earth, and 
that an angel had revealed it to a young boy named 
Joseph Smith, and that all the gifts, blessings, and 
prophecies of old had been restored with it, and this 
last revelation was to be called the Latter-day Dis- 
pensation. The priests pretended joyfully to accept 
this, and said it was the very thing they were in search 
of, nothing else having had the power to satisfy them. 

They then proceeded to give us the first grip of the 
Melchizedek or Higher Priesthood, which is said to 
be the same as Christ held. The thumb is placed on 
the knuckle of the index finger, which is placed straight 
along the palm of the hand, while the lower part of 
the hand is clasped with the remaining fingers. The 
robe for this grip was changed from the right to the 
left shoulder. We were then made to swear to avenge 
the death of Joseph Smith, the martyr, together with 
that of his brother, Hyrum, on this American nation, 
and that we would teach our children and children's 
children to do so. The penalty for this grip and oath 
was disembowelment. 

153 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

We were then marched into the northeast room (the 
men, of course, always going first) designated the 
prayer circle room. We were then made to take an 
oath of 

OBEDIENCE TO THE MORMON PRIESTHOOD. 

And now the highest or grandest grip of the Mel- 
chizedek priesthood was given. We clasped each other 



Stairway to Prayer Circle Bpoiyu 



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W — Windows — Steps. 

154 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

round the hand with the point of the index finger rest- 
ing on the wrist, and little fingers firmly linked to- 
gether. The place on the wrist where the index finger 
points is supposed to be the place where Christ was 
nailed to the cross, but they tore out and He had to be 
nailed again ; and so you place your second finger be- 
side the index on the wrist ; it is called the 

SURE SIGN OF THE NAIL. 

And if the grip is properly given, it is very hard to pull 
apart. The robe was changed from the left to the right 
shoulder to receive this grip. 

The men then formed a circle round the altar, linking 
their arms straight across, and placed their hands on 
one another's shoulders. The priest knelt at the altar 
and took hold of one of the men's hands and prayed. 
He told us that the electric current of prayer passed 
through the circle and that was the most efficacious 
kind of prayer. The women stood outside the circle 
with their veils covering their faces, the only time dur- 
ing the ceremony that they did so. 

The prayer over, they all trooped up the staircase 
on the north side of the house, into the room called the 
Instruction Room, where the people sat down on 
benches on the west side of the room. Facing them 
about midway between floor and ceiling was a wooden 
beam that went across the room from north to south, 
and from which was suspended a dirty-looking piece 
of what was once white calico. This was called "the 
Veil," and is supposed to be in imitation of the one 
in Solomon's Temple. On this veil are marks like 
those on the garments, together with extra holes for 
putting the arms through. But before going through 

155 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the veil, we received a general outline of the instruc- 
tions we had received down-stairs. This over, the 
priest took a man to the veil to one of the openings 
(marked i), where he knocked with a small wooden 
mallet that hung on the wooden support. A voice on 
the other side of the veil (it was supposed to be 
Peter's) asked who was there, when the priest, answer- 
ing for the man, said : "Adam, having been faithful, 
desires to enter." The priest then led the man up to 
the west side of the veil, where he had to put his hands 




THE ROBE. 
156 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

through and clasp the man, or Peter (to whom he whis- 
pered his new name, and the only one he ever tells, for 
they must never tell their celestial names to their wives, 
although the wives must tell theirs to their husbands) 
through the holes in the veil. He was then allowed to 
go through to the other side, which was supposed to 
be heaven, and this is where a strong imagination must 
be of some use, for anything more unlike heaven I 
can't conceive. The man having got through, he went 
to the opening (No. 2) and told the gatekeeper to call 
for the woman he was about to marry, telling him her 
name. She then stepped up to the veil where the 
marks "B" are. They couldn't see each other, but put 
their hands through the openings, one of their hands on 
each other's shoulder and the other around the waist. 
(The marks on the plan at the sides are for the arms, 
and all the marks in the plan on the veil are exactly 
as they are in the Endowment House. The top round 
mark is the place where they spoke through, and the 
square, compass, and stone correspond with the marks 
on the garments ; the two bottom marks were where the 
feet are put through), with the arms so fixed; the 
knees were placed within each other, the feet, of 
course, being the same ; the woman's given name was 
then whispered through the veil, then her new and 
celestial name, then the priestess who stood by to in- 
struct the women told them to repeat after her a most 
disgusting formula or oath. I cannot remember it 
thoroughly, but what I do, consists of "the heart and 
the liver, the belly and the thighs, the marrow and the 
bones." The last and highest grip of the Melchizedek 
priesthood was then given through the veil. 

They then released their hold of each other, and the 

157 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

priestess, taking the woman to opening No. 2, knocked 
the same as they did at the men's entrance, and the 
gatekeeper having asked, "Who is there?" and the 
priestess, having replied, "Eve, having been faithful 
in all things, desires to enter/' Eve was accordingly 
ushered into heaven. 

Before I go further I must tell how they believe the 
entrance into heaven is to be gained on the morning 
of the resurrection. Peter will call up the men and 
women (for it is not possible for a woman to be resur- 
rected or exalted, or to be made a queen in heaven, 
unless some man takes pity on her and raises her). If 




WOMAN'S CAP AND MOCCASIN. 
158 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

the marks on the garments are found to correspond 
with those on the veil (the dead are buried in the 
whole paraphernalia), if you can give the grips and 
tokens, and your new name, and you are dressed prop- 
erly in your robes, why, then, one has a sure permit 
to heaven, and will pass by the angels (who, they sup- 
pose, are to be only ministering servants) to a more 
exalted glory; the more wives they have, they think, 
the higher their glory will be. 

To resume : After we got through, we saw Joseph 
F. Smith sitting at a table recording the names of 
those who were candidates for marriage. He wrote 
the names in a book (the existence of which marriage 
register this truthful apostle has since denied, so that a 
polygamous marriage might not be found out) and 
then he wrote the two names on a slip of paper, to be 
taken into the sealing-room to the officiating priest, so 
that he might know whom he was marrying. After 
having given this slip of paper to the priest (Daniel 
H. Wells), we knelt at a little wooden altar (they are 
all alike in the Endowment House). He then asks the 
man if he is willing to take the woman to wife, and the 
woman if she is willing to take him for a husband. 
They both having answered yes, he tells the man that 
he must look to God, but the woman must look to her 
husband as her God, for if he lives his religion, the 
spirit of God will be in him, and she must therefore 
yield him unquestioning obedience, for he is as a god 
unto her, and then concludes that he, having authority 
from on high, to bind and loose here upon earth, and 
whatsoever he binds here shall be bound in heaven, 
seals the man and woman 

159 



THE REVELATION IN THE MOUNTAIN. 

FOR TIME AND ALL ETERNITY. 

He then tells the man and woman to kiss each other 
across the altar, the man kneeling on the north side 
and the woman on the south, and so it is finished. 
Sometimes they have witnesses, sometimes not ; if they 
think any trouble may arise from a marriage or that 
the woman is inclined to be a little perverse, they have 
no witnesses, neither do they give marriage certificates, 
and if occasion requires it, and it is to shield any of 
their polygamous brethren from being found out, they 
will positively swear that they did not perform any 
marriage at all, so that the women in this church have 
but a very poor outlook for being considered honorable 
wives. 

When the marriage ceremony was over we came out 
of the "sealing-room," and I crossed "Heaven" into 
the ladies' dressing-room, where, after having dressed 
and my husband paid the fees, we took our departure, 
together with that of the "Holy Spirit." 




MAN'S CAP. 

I hope that this article may prove of some use in 
warning and enlightening people as to that most 
horrid blasphemy, jargon, and mummery that goes 
on in that most sacred "House of the Lord." 

MRS. G. S. R . 

THE end. 

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